I've played my fair share of survival-horror games over the years but I can say without a doubt I haven't played one like Signalis until recently.

Setting-wise, it takes place in a dystopian future where the solar system is governed by a totalitarian regime where human cyborgs called Gestalts and Androids called Replikas work together. You play as Replika named Elster, whose searching for her Gestalt partner after their ship crash-lands on an arctic world. Without spoiling too much, I'll just say that things go down hill from there.

Gameplay-wise, the player has to navigate throughout levels using a limited inventory gathering items for specific puzzles/events and solving them to progress. Along the way, the player will find weapons and limited amounts of ammunition but combat can and should be avoided to prevent wasting supplies. Notes and documents can also be found and their contents will be stored in a data log that can be accessed alongside the inventory. In the same area is the radio transmitter/receive which can be used to solve certain puzzles and deal with one specific enemy type that will be encountered in the game. Combat is pretty simple, in that you equip a weapon, load it, and fire at an enemy until they're knocked over at which point you just kick them to ensure they stay down. (NOTE: Some of the enemies may come back to life!) The only exceptions to this are boss battles which may be a bit more difficult to deal with.

In terms of 3D visuals, their meant to emulate the low-poly graphics of classic games for the Nintendo 64 and the PS1 albeit with some modern touches for the lighting, reflections, and transparency effects. Speaking of the lighting, the use of dynamic lighting and shadows helps make the atmosphere more eerie. For the 2D visuals and cutscenes, the art-style reminds me a bit of the works of Tsutomu Nihei (BLAME!) and Masamune Shirow (Ghost In The Shell) though it's probably coincidental. The soundtrack is hauntingly beautiful and the sound design was very well done. The use of audio from old number stations and classical music for certain puzzles involving the radio transmitter/receiver actually fit very well with some of the situations once the player has the context.

The only negative thing I can say about this game is that the limited inventory (you can only carry six items) often led up to me backtracking several times throughout the game.

That aside, I would highly recommend this game for any fans of survival-horror games like System Shock 2 and Dead Space.

10/10