The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis
The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis is a lot of things. A little bit No Man’s Sky, a little bit Subnautica, and a hint of BioShock to start with. This survival crafting adventure game set on an alien planet has obvious inspirations, but is hoping to carve out its own special niche, too.
To start with, The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis is heavily focused on its narrative. You play as Jane, and your goal is to find and rescue your brother, who is somewhere on Sirenis. The second interesting angle is that the planet itself is sentient and talks to you. Sirenis is voiced by veteran actor Patricia Summersett. The writing itself isn’t remarkable, but the delivery is professional.
Shoot and Craft
I played a very small demo slice of the upcoming Early Access game. The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis doesn’t stray too far from familiar survival crafting mechanics. You harvest the planet’s minerals and organic life with a multitool-like gun, and you need to pay attention to some basic stats like health, hunger, and thirst. You have a pistol to start with for basic defense.
The ruins of a mysterious settlement provide temporary shelter and storage until you can gather materials and begin to craft a home base and all its associated upgrade stations. One unfortunate mechanic is that when you die, you lose all the materials you’ve collected. There might be a corpse run retrieval element that I missed.
At least in the demo, there weren’t too many enemy types. Even the smallest ones were deadly at the start of the game. There’s a drone-like sentry that turns hostile and shoots from a distance, and different forms of organic life that leap onto you.
A Way to Go
I don’t want to judge the demo too harshly because the game is nowhere near completion. If I could make a wish list, it would include finishing up controller support, giving the player a lock-on mechanic, and the ability to tweak just about everything in settings.
Visually, Sirenis looks a lot like something out of No Man’s Sky. The color palette is saturated and colorful. Currently, textures are flat and lack detail. However, the environment is interesting, with small secret areas, underground caves, and different elevations. It feels like the work in progress that it is. There are quite a few sound-related bugs. Environmental and narrative audio needs a bit of tweaking and is often cut out entirely.
A Vision of the Future
Although not noted in the PR materials I received, I’ve read that The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis is also being developed for VR systems. I can see it. For one thing, that space has far fewer games in the survival adventure genre. Graphically, The Signal looks more in line with VR titles, with their slightly less capable processing power.
Although The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis has some potential thanks to its narrative focus, it’s still pretty rough around the edges, not unexpected from a game just poised to enter Early Access. With time, quality feedback from players and continued attention by the developer, The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis might be a survival crafting adventure worth spending many hours with.
***PC code provided for preview***
