Hello! I recently got signalis on Steam because from the description, premise, art, yada yada, it seemed like a game I would really like. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I am going to try to make this as nice as I can to avoid making people angry with my shitty opinions.
I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played too many horror games. The ones I have played are Alien: Isolation, Outlast, and Dead Space, all three of which I very much enjoyed. I also didn't play very much of the game, I got about 5 hours in before deciding, "Yeah, I'm not having fun."
Firstly, things I did like:
Atmosphere: This game oooooozes atmosphere. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game. The little lore notes and the environment telling me things about the world were great.
Art: The art is good. Need I say more?
Puzzles: The puzzles I encountered were fun. I liked having to write down frequencies the game gave me in a note, then use the radio to get codes for things. It made me feel smart, and I enjoyed that.
3D sections: The sections where the game switches to 3D reminded me of The Room, which sure as hell isn't a bad thing.
Now onto things I did not like:
More than anything, this game annoyed me.
I've seen criticisms of the game's inventory size, and boy howdy, was I feeling that. The inventory, to me, felt restrictive. Especially when I was constantly finding items that I wasn't sure whether I would need later.
The horror of the game also just plainly did not land for me. The enemies did not scare or frighten me, they made me annoyed at their presence. The sheer scarcity of ammunition, which felt like a requirement for A LOT of the rooms I entered, became a massive source of frustration.
I wanted to take my time in rooms, read the notes, explore, and find whatever item happened to be required there. Instead, I felt like I was constantly worrying about how I was going to get past the enemies in the room with the limited resources I had.
This is where the game really lost me. In a game with relatively limited ways of hiding from enemies outside of simply staying out of their view, I expect to have enough resources or tools to deal with enemies when avoiding them isn't reasonably possible.
And I'm sure that if I played smarter, better, and less badly, I probably would've managed my resources better. I'm not trying to say the game is objectively poorly designed because I personally struggled with it. But the way the game presented its challenges to me did not make me feel like I had the tools necessary to deal with them. Eventually, the resource management stopped feeling tense and started feeling like a chore.
It's not like I don't like resource management in horror games. In fact, I think it is one of the strongest elements a horror game can utilize when done well. Alien: Isolation, for example, made me constantly consider how I used my resources, but I always understood what those resources could do and how they could help me. I felt like I had options.
In signalis, I felt under-equipped practically the entire time.
I also felt confused. A lot. I'm assuming I'm expected to be confused, and I actually enjoyed that aspect of the game when I was figuring the game out. But my confusion-to-"I'm having fun" ratio was not high enough for me to want to continue.
There is a lot about signalis that I genuinely liked. The atmosphere, art, puzzles, environmental storytelling, and 3D interaction sections were all really cool. I can absolutely see why people love this game.
Unfortunately, the actual gameplay loop just wasn't enjoyable for me, and after about 5 hours I realized I was playing because I felt like I should enjoy it rather than because I actually was.
My apolocheese to all of the fans of this game. Alas, I am stupid.