This game is not revolutionary in any way. That said, it's a point and click game with excellent voice acting, sane puzzles, a fun enough sci-fi story, and overall very polished. It's like when you're zapping TV and stumble on a movie that you've never seen before, it doesn't rock your world, but it leaves you pleasantly surprised as you watch it and then go to bed. I recommend it.
I never played the previous Bard's Tale games. This game has a nice mix of turn based combat, exploration and puzzle solving. None of it is very complex, but it's a pleasant way to pass the time. Good voice acting, don't expect great graphics.
This game's story is centered around corruption, interplanetary politics, and a bit of family drama. None of it is particularly complex or hard to follow; in fact, I found it fairly easy to figure out most of the narrative beats well in advance(maybe it's just me). This, however, doesn't mean that I didn't have a good time with it: I think the story is presented well and flows nicely, and I did develop a bit of an attachment to some of the characters, despite the fact that the game doesn't run long enough to develop any of them much. I was satisfied with the ending I got; it was probably the "best" one, although I haven't tried playing the game multiple times. Gameplay: it's a pretty simple game, and your interactions with the world will mainly consist of walking around, having conversations, downloading news articles from billboards, scanning(i.e. clicking on) a few things here and there with your cyber-implants to collect evidence, and checking your cell. The game tracks all the conversations, clues(found and not yet found, so you'll know if you're missing something in an area before you leave) and other info you've collected in your cell, with a simple and intuitive UI. You'll need it to check all those things thoroughly to get a good impression of the world and a good idea of what's happening with the case. You influence the narrative in two ways: through dialogue choices(all timed, but it shouldn't be a problem if you've been paying attention), and through "sheets" you compile and submit, to your HQ or other interested parties, from your cell, with information collected during the game. I think the game presents a good amount of choice, and it informs you of the consequences of what you've done, although I didn't check how much things change in different playthroughs. It took me about 9 hours to finish, but that depends on how thorough you are; I also tend to play slowly. I liked it. Given the price, you could certainly do worse than buying this game.
It seems there's not a lot of people buying this game so I wrote this to provide some information. First of all, the technical stuff: I have a laptop with a nvidia 2070 and an 8th generation i7, the game ran above 100 fps the entire time. You can't rebind controls, this wasn't a problem for me on mouse and keyboard but I don't know how it works with a controller. The game looks decent, remember that it's indie, so I didn't expect AAA level graphics. There are a few characters you'll interact with, their animations are kinda stiff but I didn't find it to be a big deal. The voice acting is pretty good(for an indie game)! I played through the game multiple times and experienced one crash to desktop and later a bug that seemingly corrupted the latest autosave; thankfully the game keeps all the autosaves it makes from the start so I didn't lose too much progress. Speaking of gameplay, The Signifier is mostly a walking simulator with a few very easy puzzles that you'll solve while exploring memories. There will also be some dialogue choices to make on a few occasions: you should pay attention to those as there are multiple endings. I liked the game's UI. The story's themes are centered around AI and technological development in general, the consciousness and political struggle, which makes it interesting, but it feels somewhat rushed or underdeveloped; by the end I felt like the game didn't really provide any definitive answers about its central mistery(at least in the three endings I got, I'm not sure if there are more), and the relationships between its few characters should have been fleshed out more. I played for 12 hours while trying to get multiple endings, but my first run took between 4 and 6 hours; a fast player can probably complete the game in less time. I think the game's story could have benefited from a couple extra hours, but I don't regret buying it for 17€, since it's a fairly low price. I'm interested in seeing what the devs can do next.
