![]() ![]() You are given an interface that is broken into several zones. How do you go about this brain-teasing task? I hear you ask. It’s your task to take the broken lumps of rusting junk around you and turn them back into fully functioning pieces of machinery. So, The Signal State sees you move to a farm where nothing works. I’m going to openly say that I didn’t but that doesn’t detract from the gaming experience, that’s just me. This is going to be one of those cases where if you get it I think you’ll love it. The Signal State requires a different type of logic to many other puzzlers. Considering I got absolutely nowhere with this title, not because it isn’t any good, but because my brain doesn’t work this way and I’m really bad at it I don’t think scoring the title is fair. I’m making it a preview because if I make this article a review I’m going to have to score the game. The Signal State has been out for a while so this technically isn’t a preview. In the interest of fairness and total honesty, I’m adding an important disclaimer here. Whether that’s referring to the game or more specifically to me playing the game remains to be seen. A game that I literally stand more of a chance of getting a doctorate in chaos theory than being able to play. This brain-exploding rewiring malarky is basically the foundation of The Signal State, a game that should probably be simple. I can’t ride a bicycle and I can just about tie my shoelaces, so giving me a piece of machinery and saying, “rewire that,” is like giving a monkey a typewriter and asking them to annotate the expanded works of Tolstoy. Knowing what I know about these communities, it seems like this would definitely be a viable option for getting more help on the levels.Why do I do these things to myself?! I like to think of myself as a fairly creative, (hopefully slightly talented,) individual. If the hints aren’t helpful enough, the game suggests that the player connect to the Discord server for the game, which I thought was an interesting option, and great for community building. One interesting aspect of this game that draws on that community is a built-in Discord feature. Therefore, this game seems like it is suited for a very specific audience, and for that audience, I expect it would be very well-liked and successful. If I was more keyed into this kind of game, the hints would have likely helped me much more. This being said, I feel that The Signal State is for people familiar with the genre, who are really looking for logic puzzles of this kind. The language used was a bit too technical or complex for me at times, so I struggled to understand even when asking for hints. As someone who is not so familiar with this genre and does not traditionally play similar puzzle games, I felt that I wanted a bit more from the tutorials. The tutorial elements and chat features with the other characters in The Signal State are helpful and add a bit of humor and flair to the relatively limited storytelling. The sound effects for the different components are satisfying, and the music that plays during gameplay is pleasant, and while I struggled to complete puzzles, I never got tired of the repeating music! They look like paintings, which is a very interesting juxtaposition to the very logic-heavy gameplay. Though they are relatively few and simple, they were incredibly atmospheric. The first thing I noticed while playing this game were the beautiful environmental backgrounds. Some math is involved, but logic plays a large part as the player’s toolkit increases and gets more and more complicated. Gameplay involves working through all of the electrical components of the farm, whether that be turning on the lights to more complicated elements along the way. The player repairs these components through levels of logic puzzles that represent electrical wiring. The player leaves their community to branch out at this second farm, where the higher-ups hope can provide more shelter and resources for the community. They hope to begin to rebuild communities, as it has been decades since machines stopped working. The Signal State is a logic-based simulation puzzle game developed by Reckoner Industries and published by The Iterative Collective and Indienova. The premise of the game is that the player is a member of a post-worldwide disaster community, who attempts to get a farmhouse and its machinery back up and running. In this disaster, all the machines in the world suddenly shut down, leaving humanity without computers, cars, and every other convenience we’ve constructed for ourselves. ![]()
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