Signalis on Game Pass makes excellent use of a simple safe code puzzle

The worlds of video gaming are still quite reckless with security despite all the top-secret bases of military personnel and castles that they keep guarded. Take a look at these examples: Dying Light 2, Part I of The Last of UsOr DeathloopIn which safe combination and computer passwords are written on small pieces of paper that can be hidden from view.

The same can’t be said for SignalisGame Pass released the retro survival-horror video game, called. It takes place in the outer reaches of a fictional star system, on a wintry planet not unlike the Antarctic research base of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Something has gone awry at an underground facility, and as an android recently awoken from hibernation, it’s your job to descend into the complex, fend off feral zombies, and solve a heap of environmental puzzles from a top-down perspective.

[Ed. note: Light puzzle spoilers follow for Signalis.]

One of the game’s earliest hurdles is a locked safe in a classroom on the east side of the map. Upon first encountering the safe, I breathed a heavy sigh and, disappointed that an otherwise stylish game was resorting to such a tired video game trope, began to scour the classroom, and the rooms adjacent to it, for the code’s telltale note. It didn’t work.

Instead I came across a service request form. It read: “The wall safe in classroom 4B keeps resetting to the default combination. What’s the point of the whole radio code broadcasting system if our safe can only be opened with the code in the manual?” Naturally, this sparked a search for said manual. But first, I found an aperture card — a largely defunct technology that, among other functions, allows for the viewing of an embedded piece of microfilm. It was brought to the microfilm reader I previously discovered. voilà: In ghostly, magnified printing, there was the default code for safekeeping.

Image: Rose-engine/Humble Games

The puzzle was both challenging yet intuitive and made sense when viewed in the context. Signalis’ world: This is a facility built on a class system that works to keep important information away from the prying eyes of miners, janitors, and bodyguards. It stands to reason that the bureaucratic elite wouldn’t leave important safe combos lying on a table, or in an open locker. To send me down the right path, it took an angry written complaint, which, according to the file number, was through many layers of red tape.

In certain cases, I don’t mind finding a keypad code jotted on a markerboard. There’s a certain self-awareness at play — something that says, “Look, this is a video game, and sometimes, characters need to be stupid in order for you to have fun.” (Prey is still my favorite game from Arkane Studios, and it’s one of this trope’s foremost offenders.)

But there’s something thrilling about existing in a game world in which NPCs are actually careful, thoughtful, and fastidious. You can see the property from someone you don’t know, which increases your voyeuristic ability to look at it. It is not want me doing so. Developer rose engine has flooded Signalis You will find the thrill in solving puzzles.

I’m not saying that I want every game to feature two-factor authentication puzzles (actually, that might be pretty fun), but I do think that the vocabulary of video games is widespread enough that traditional safe-cracking and computer-hacking puzzles need to go the way of the aperture card. When studios fill their worlds with intelligent people, they’re trusting their players to respond in turn. We toss around the word “immersive” so often, but it’s a rare game that actually earns the label. Signalis It deserves to be included on this list.