Resident Evil Meets Evangelion in 2022’s Most Unforgettable Horror Game

The year was 1998, and I was sitting in my living room in the late evening, with a PlayStation controller in my small hands. I had just fired up this new-ish game all my classmates were talking about: Resident Evil 2. You must play it at night, they said. Sure, why not. I remember getting to the police station, barely. Then a zombie unexpectedly crawled out in a hallway, giving me a jump scare I still remember today. I put my controller down, turned the game off, and never played again.

To be fair, I was 11 at the time, so perhaps Resident Evil 2 wasn’t the best choice of game. (That’s what peer pressure does!) But I never fared too well with horror games. Then, technology evolved. Graphics and controls got more sophisticated, but something got lost in the process. I didn’t have any issues with Resident Evil 5. And I didn’t bat an eye playing through Until Dawn. I thought I could handle any horror game with smug indifference. Signalis proved me wrong.

Image: rose-engine/Humble Games

Developed by German studio rose-engine, Signalis is a 2022 survival horror game, currently available in the PlayStation Plus August lineup. The game is designed to mimic the graphics and gameplay of PSX games, especially the early Resident Evil and Silent Hill titles. It’s a top-down shooter where players have to navigate claustrophobic environments, solving puzzles and avoiding or killing zombie-like enemies while trying to make sense of a complex story rooted in the concepts of memory, identity, and isolation.

Signalis is set in a retro-futuristic universe where two political entities, the Eusan Nation and the Eusan Empire, are at war. The Nation has two types of citizens: Replikas, biosynthetic clones created to fulfill specific roles in society, such as workers or soldiers, and Gestalts, defined as “any person who is not a Replika.” This distinction is central to the game’s themes. Replikas are equipped with the memories, personality, and skill set of a template Gestalt, but their memories are artificially repressed through an unreliable technology called bioresonance.

Signalis is more than a nostalgia-fueled homage to the PSX era

Image: rose-engine

Players take the role of Elster, a ship technician Replika who awakens after her spaceship crashes. She’s searching for a woman named Alina Seo inside S-23 Sierpinski, a station infected by a mysterious malady that turns Replikas into monsters. It’s impossible to say more about the game’s story without spoiling the experience for prospective players, but Signalis has four endings, and players are still debating their meanings and the main story beats. Trust me, Signalis will throw you for a loop (wink wink).

In keeping with that Resident Evil inspiration, the main challenges come from a stiff weapon aiming system, limited ammo, and small inventory space, which becomes particularly challenging when you have to manage the many, many keys needed to proceed in the game. There are safe rooms where you can save and store items, which can then be retrieved from any storage box in the game, but I wish the developers added a function to drop any item from your inventory.

“Limitation” is the word that best describes the creative process behind this game. Signalis works with limited resources, in terms of graphics and gameplay, and it forces the player to face the same issue when you run out of ammo or have to trek to the closest safe room to make space in your inventory. Signalis shows how self-imposed limitations can make creativity thrive, and the result is a beautiful, thought-provoking game that is much more than a homage to the PSX era of survival horrors.

That minimalistic approach comes to life in the game’s aesthetics, inspired by great sci-fi anime like Evangelion, Blame!, and Ghost in the Shell. There is no background music in Signalis. You have to navigate the narrow spaces of S-23 Sierpinski in haunting silence, broken only by the piercing shrieks of the monsters when they spot you. Then, a haunting, beating rhythm starts, lasting until you kill the monsters or leave the area. Speaking of the creatures, they are basically a clump of pixels, but that’s enough to evoke horror through their lurching, jerking movements. And what’s worse, they don’t stay down. Unless you use a specific item on their bodies, the monsters will spring back to life at a random point in the future, making traversing previously “cleared” areas a nerve-wracking experience.

A 'less is more' approach makes Signalis a modern horror gem

Signalis is a game built on subtraction. Through that process, it recaptures the elusive feeling of the classics it draws inspiration from. When games had limited technical resources, they found more ways to stir players’ emotions — including fear, as my 11-year-old self remembers well. Of course, many modern games can achieve the same result with advanced technology. However, excessive reliance on realism and on multiplying the array of options and choices given to players has damaged that elusive component of creativity that we keep looking for in older games and retroclones.

Image: rose-engine/Humble Games

Since its release, Signalis has amassed a dedicated following of fans who resonate with the game’s themes of queer, non-binary identity. It’s an impressive achievement for a game set in a dark future where oppression seems to prevaricate over hope.

But more than anything else, Signalis is a genuinely scary and unsettling game. The tension is so carefully built that I found myself startled by Elster’s shadow on a wall. At least, this time I did not put my controller down.

You have until Aug. 31 to download Signalis as part of the monthly PlayStation Plus games.