Essays,
Fictions

     

Works of literary nature.
Inspired by a wide range of literature from around the world.

01.

An Essay on Signalis. (Work in Progress)

Overview: Signalis, released on 2022-10-27 is a survival & psychological horror work from the German developer Rose-Engine — it is a oneiric and surrealistic work which takes narrative and aesthetic cues from classic survival horror games such as Silent Hill as well as late Soviet era film and literature: namely the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and his Солярис(1972) adapted from the 1961 novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem. It also takes from a vast depth of other influences, from the science fiction of Lovecraft and Chambers, 20th century science & psychoanalysis, Asian cultures & texts like the 易经. It is a psychological science fiction work exploring Cold War and Eurasian Space Age aesthetics, set in a collapsing nation roughly equivalent to the late Soviet Union, with themes of tragedy, love, the passing of time, entropy, and loss. As with many works of contemporary horror game genre, Signalis is steeped in coded meaning, ARG elements, and allusions, but its relative sophistication in topic and breadth of influence is quite unique. As such I sought to explain and interpret it through a literary and critical theory lens in an essay, of which I have been conceptualizing since its release and have been writing since early 2024.

This essay was written to be presented as a video essay, but it is presented here as just the text. ASCII art and ASCII diagrams, as well as the document formatting are done by myself.