Signos

I found this to be rather poorly written, with strange sentence constructions all over the place. It has since been revealed that the author is not a native English speaker, which explains the language issues. This is not a gamebreaker: Marco Innocenti had similar issues with "Andromeda Awakening" last year, and has shown with "Andromeda Apocalypse" this year that adequate testing can accomplish wonders with language. The author of "Signos" has an advantage here, though, in that his chosen "old school" design calls for significantly more utilitarian and functional text -- text which would be far easier to translate, with much less danger of the translator-tester imposing his own style of expression over the author's.

Now, the overall game design: If the author wants to emulate the brief descriptions and terseness of early adventure games, that is certainly his prerogative and I will not stand in his way. That style has declined significantly in popularity, but that does not mean that they cannot still be fun for someone of a certain mindset. There are certain significant implementation issues with this game, however. In many cases, it is possible to repeat events that by rights should happen only once.

I did roll my eyes a little at the story. We are seeking enlightenment; there are gathered here various contemplatives of various religious traditions, and apparently we are also collecting pages representing the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are a trope that has been done to death, in my opinion, and they always seem to be a little poorly or simplistically understood. (Just once, I would like to see something based around the seven virtues. But then there are apparently two different sets of seven virtues, so, whichever set you choose, there's bound to be someone who only knows the other set and who will claim you've gotten everything completely and utterly wrong.)

Back to "Signos", I got stuck and never finished the game. However, as I understand it, the ending involves the destruction of the "sins" collected as pages throughout the game. In order to collect those pages, one has to "sin" ... well, I think I have come across at least two theologians (one of them is Robert Barron, whose "And Now I See" I am currently reading; I don't remember who else there might be) who assert that the first step towards Christian enlightenment is to face up to the darkness within: recognise one's sinfulness (I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous, among others, agree that "the first step is in recognising that the problem exists") and to embrace it -- not to revel in sinfulness, as one interpretation of "to embrace" might suggest, but to incorporate it into the whole of one's identity and to conquer it by swallowing it up. In which case, "Signos" is perhaps very slyly proffering what is a very real theology in the guise of what seems to be a very simplistic approach to spirituality.

Of course, one would have to be familiar with that particular approach to sin in order to recognise it in this game. Unless "Signos" explains itself a lot better in the end -- unlikely, given its very spare design -- it can only come off as a simplistic treasure hunt, through a barely coherent dreamscape.

Stale multigrain bread and mineral water.