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2. 4 Accept

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My name is Gary Butterfield. My name is Cole Ross. And you're listening to Watch Out for Fireballs. It is a Games Club podcast. And this week we are talking about Signolas, which is a survival horror game developed by Rose Engine and published by Humble Games and Playsam for the PC and contemporary systems in 2022. We cannot stress this enough. It is a survival horror game.

Yes. It is a survival horror game. It is very faithful to the form. Yes. One of the reasons why I love it. Yeah. Yeah. We will get into it. I like this game. I want to like it a little bit more. Almost all my reasons feel like subjectivity soup. No. Seth, they're real things I felt, but they don't feel like they're necessarily flaws of the game. They're just things that it didn't connect with me. So we'll get into it. It's not going to be if you're looking forward to a head to head.

Yeah. You know, like our crossfire kind of stereo in this, like me and Cole, just like, I think it's an A minus. I think it's a B. Yeah. We're not going to get into that. We retain our commitment, our 12-year commitment now to not delivering that to you. Yeah. I have no interest in yelling about video games. This is our premium episode for the month, which means that everybody gets the generalities, but patrons get the entire thing. So if you would like to be one of those people,

go to patreon.com slash duckfeedtv, $5 a month, get you all of them, all the back episodes as well. I think this will be a good one because the plot is complicated and weird in this game. So the back half of the episode will have a lot in it. It will. And, you know, to that, to that matter, I would say if you have any inkling that this is something that you like, we're going to spoil things for you. So keep that, keep that in mind. As usual, doing our best to avoid spoilers here in the

reality is because that's not what we're talking about. Yeah. It's not right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to, there'll be some things about how the story is presented, not actual story bits. Yes. Yeah. But in this game, you play as Elster. You are a replicant, you know, kind of an artificial human semi-biological dot dot dot question mark. And you are exploring this mining facility slash work camp on an alien planet, searching for someone important to you.

Yes. Is the is the setup? Yes. It's going to go places. The game is a retro survival horror game. And when we say that, we don't mean retro survival horror, like anything you'd be familiar with recently. You know, like we just did the bunker. That's a survival horror game. Yeah. This is calling back very specifically to Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill 1. Yes. The PlayStation Roots of the genre. And as somebody who is very familiar with, uh,

a bunch of these, this is the one that feels most like it gets it right. Um, of the of the survival horror retro inspired kind of deals, you know, that have come out recently. Prior to this, it was tormented souls. This came along. And it was like, oh, this is on a whole new level. So. Yeah. It's also when I have criticisms of this game. I don't have that context. Mm-hmm. You know, saying that for your benefit, but then also for listeners, like I am from my limited perspective. I'm not comparing this to tormented souls. I'm comparing it to Resident Evil 1.

Mm-hmm. You know, which is, it can be an unfair comparison because that's a genre maker. That's your point of reference. Yeah. But it is my point of reference. Right. Mm-hmm. Uh, the major deviation between those games in this game is this plays from a top down perspective. Uh, this kind of 2.5 D. It is rendered in the low poly PlayStation 1 models. Um, but it is overhead. So things, uh, almost like, uh, Metal Gear Solid for PS1. Yeah. Metal Gear Solid is a very good point of reference, especially when you see an engine cutscenes. Um,

with the level of detail in the face, uh, and kind of the animation and acting that is going on. Um, yeah. And I, I believe that this is a very good looking game. Uh, I, in the past, have had a lot of reservations about the style of let's take low poly, um, let's take low poly models and then run them through like a retroizing like pixel filter kind of thing. Yeah. I've always found that that feels swimming. It feels unsatisfying. Uh, kind of makes me sick a little bit.

It's one of the things that makes me a little bit hesitant about a short hike, uh, similar deal there. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but I think this gets it about as right as I can. This has a very striking look.

It's really interesting because the art style is not consistent throughout the game. So like, when you're playing the game, I agree with you. Like when you're actually in action, the game almost has like a mixed media approach to its aesthetics. Mm-hmm.

There are a lot of overlapping and different textures and using different levels of fidelity. Mm-hmm. For things and these, depending on which one is using it works for me. So like in game, looks great.

The, I think that's, you know, I, I would 100% agree with you. And then it will cut to like a dodgy portrait or a dodgy like collage. Mm-hmm. Kind of thing that I like a lot less. Mm-hmm. You know, so it ends up being a thing where like the actual play, I like how it looks in a retro way.

Yeah. The overall aesthetic presentation feels a little nice nails video to me at points. Mm-hmm. Like let's hit the weird lever and then just make a bunch of German words pop up.

You know, like there's a little bit of that that pops up. And again, when I talk about subjectivity soup, that's going to be somebody's favorite thing about this. Like, you know, someone is going to be like, oh, that's fucking awesome. I love how that made me feel. For me, it just didn't, it felt like somebody pulling a lever.

Yeah. I'll be the person who comes out and says, I adore the aesthetic of this, the, the mixed media, you know, kind of kind of look to it.

The kind of typographical stuff that it is doing. And then, you know, close ups on these low poly kind of things. Yeah, I will be the person who says, yeah, this, this rules.

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