Quirky isometric point and click gem of yesteryear. A bit dated perhaps, but the narrative holds up and it's fairly easy compared to its peers, allowing for a pretty frustration-free experience. Highly recommended to point-and-click fans and appreciators of tastefully schlocky psychological horror.
Riven is one of my all-time favorite games, and this remake got as close as possible to recapturing the magic of my first playthrough. Its additions ensured wonderful surprises even with the original burned into my brain and the puzzle updates demanded I actually solve them anew rather than coast on memory. Every iconic locale is stunningly realized, and the layout adjustments are smart and make sense within the logic of the world. The story, with its critique of colonialism and fascist phenomenology, remains powerful and relevant, and the narrative additions are intriguing. The character models are perhaps a bit lacklustre, especially compared to the incredible environment art, but it's a minor point. Overall, this is an excellent remake and any fan of Riven or curious newcomer ought to play it. My only other slight nitpick involves the tweaks to the central puzzles. The original Riven featured, in my opinion, the most organically integrated puzzles in adventure gaming history. It created the feeling that you were truly probing a strange world, divining its workings, and leveraging your findings to complete your mission. It remains unparalleled. The remake reworks these central puzzles in the interest of making them less opaque, ensuring they stand out from the world of Riven in slightly starker relief. By definition, this means trading in some of that organic integration in favor of a more "game-y" presentation. This is a nuance, however, and not enough for me to shave a star off of my rating. Cyan has created a magisterial reimagining of their absolute masterpiece, but they have not precisely replicated it, and thus they have not rendered it obsolete. For this reason, I think the original 1997 version is still worth playing if you can stomach the retro experience. However, I wouldn't recommend playing it *instead* of the remake, but *in addition to* it.
In an alternate universe, heady narrative games get all the financing, all the marketing, all the resources they need to have their singular visions realized to maximum potential. In this universe, however, ambitious experimental projects such as these are relegated to lower-budgeted indie experiences, and it's inevitable that this comes at the cost of realization, to some extent. So it is with The Signifier, an eerie and relentlessly imaginative psychological thriller adventure game clearly assembled with loving care by a tiny team. The Signifier is engaging with some serious discourse, tackling questions about psychological epistemology and its subordination to capitalism, the lines between organic and artificial intelligence, and the ethics of tech and privacy in our postmodern age. At the same time, it's a story of personal traumas, relationships, obsessions, and the overlap between the three. For these qualities, it is worth playing for anyone willing to look beyond its technical shortcomings. For all the strength of its intellectual drama and phantasmagorical visual style, The Signifier suffers from graphical glitches and clipping that compromise the production value when they emerge. Gameplay is not always smooth, particularly in the mechanics that utilize sliders. In a few places, there are gaps in the narrative which, while not prohibitive in regards to understanding the story, make it seem like certain lines of the branching dialogues may have been removed a bit haphazardly. In one scene in particular, a major character had an entire conversation with me about a revelation that never actually occured, referencing something they claimed to have told me which they never did. Tome, however, it is easy to chalk these issue up to limited resources and a skeleton crew. The game's ambitions clearly exceed its budget, and if you're the type of gamer who can accept that then The Signifier will give you a unique, affecting experience that's well worth the price.
