Games of 2022 continues with a lovely piece on Signalis
I played many games in 2022 that felt prescient about our current moment in time but of them, Signalis felt the most personal. A sci-fi horror that folds back on itself, tied into gripping knots by its own plot threads. Within it, as android-on-a-mission Elster, you are trapped. She's searching for the woman she loves in a labyrinth of archaic technology propping up a rapidly decaying future. VHS cassettes and floppy disks join Soviet futurist spacecraft.
Our present is no different. Imagining our futures based on decades past with endlessly recycled nostalgia. Our media landscape dominated by whatever was popular decades ago, suffocating attempts at new expression. In the words of Godspeed You! Black Emperor,"We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, And the machine is bleeding to death". Within that decay, desperate to survive, is Elster and us both.
As if that wasn't enough, her identity is challenged by the forces of government and society. Suppressed where possible. Her body is not made hers to own but dictated by those same forces. For women and queer people, hatred towards our autonomy and very right to exist has felt like a rising tide.
I can be propped up by self-determination all I want but there truly is no dousing the part of me that lives for love. Signalis, for all its unending horrors, stirred up the romantic in me. Reminding me I can endure anything for the people that matter. For one person who matters. Something so reassuring emerging out of its nightmare was one of 2022's greatest gifts.
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