My Game of the Year in 2024 was Signalis. (That's the year I played it for the first time.)
The writing and lore and allusions of the game are intriguing beyond question; the world design and levels and enemies are both very intuitive and maze-like, balancing on a tight-rope that MANY other developers fail to; the gameplay and encounter design and puzzles are all open enough to take your time and attention without being so obtuse as to be mashing buttons until something works or forcing the player to find a guide for help.
Something about what Signalis does and the way it does it is genius. Everything is simply right in the sweet spot for what it needs to be to be good. I commend the effort gone into this work, and I thank my brother for introducing it to me.
It’s also the perfect Survival Horror game for me: i.e. not so scary as to be debilitating, nor so easygoing as to be a steamroll. For my gameplay style, which err’s on the side of ultra-conservatism and saving as many resources as humanly possible - which I guess means I’m a very passive player - this game works beautifully. I was even able to beat the game itself on the harder difficulty with little enough error and resource usage to make myself genuinely proud and my brother dumbfounded.
Signalis is fantastic. Beyond all of the praises I’ve already heaped upon it, the tone and the atmosphere of it are brilliant, and so brilliantly suit the interesting and strange structure and the mysteries the story leaves open to interpretation. I also love how the player’s actions - meaning quite literally how good they play - are what influence which of the 3 regular endings you get. I should hop back on and play differently to try to get the 2 endings I haven’t seen yet. I know there’s Leave, Memory, Promise, and the secret ending called Artifact. I got Artificat, and I also got Memory. I need to try to get Leave and Promise.
I will more than happily buy Signalis again when it hits GOG, and I hope you do too.