IFComp 2012: Signos

Signos by Mauricio Diaz Garcia is an entry in the 2012 ifcomp in which the player seeks enlightenment.

(This post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

I had a great deal of trouble with this one. The version I was initially playing didn't function at all correctly--the pictures weren't displayed and the sound didn't play, among other problems. These problems were resolved by playing a more recently updated version.

The premise is that the PC has created the environment of the game within his imagination to search for answers to the big questions in life, such as "Why am I here?" and "What's my purpose?". Attempting to answer those questions in an IF game would be pretty ambitious! Signos is not that ambitious.

For a game with such a lofty premise, Signos is remarkably simple. If the game would provide better responses to guide the player as to what is useful and what is not, it could be beaten in ten minutes by anybody. There's nothing to it: imitate a few NPCs and use some items in the obvious ways and the game is done.

But the game is a little bewildering. The PC begins the game wearing a mask, and carrying a bottle of essence and a book, which is initially blank. Performing certain actions, such as removing the mask, will add a page to this book, on which is written the name of some vice, like "PRIDE". If you perform none of the actions, you can hand over the bottle of essence to the buda you encounter, and win the game with no points. If you do perform some such action, you must start a fire and burn the pages before the buda will accept your bottle of essence. What exactly is the meaning of all of this? I guess that the PC is letting go of his vices by burning them, but why can you win without experiencing and renouncing all six?

The actions you have to take to get all six pages are sometimes quite obscure, too. In order to get page 4, "GLUTTONY", you must drink water twice while in the lake, but not at the lake bottom. And just drink won't do. How are you meant to figure this out? To get page 3, "WRATH", you must yell at the buda. Why would you do that? If there are clues in the game to do these things, I missed them. Even guessing that the missing vices should be wrath, gluttony, and envy (which actually isn't featured in the game), it doesn't make it any easier to figure out what you're supposed to do. I even had tried to kill buda, which seemed the thing to do when I met him, to no avail. The walkthrough was necessary.

Besides the general obscurity of the game, it had some other problems. It was generally underimplemented, missing many objects mentioned in the scene descriptions, and really needs synonyms--wake should do the same as wake up, and drink should have worked for drink water when swimming in the lake, for example. Furthermore, the help command just gives generic how-to-play-an-IF information, the hint command was useless, and the walkthrough command isn't mentioned anywhere--I just guessed that it existed. Games should really always implement about, too, in my opinion, but I suppose that one didn't really impact the gameplay.

I hate to be so negative. I do think that the idea (as I interpeted it) of experiencing and then letting go of vices could have some potential, but it wasn't realized in Signos. I enjoyed this one even less than Murphy's Law, so I fear I must give it only 1/10.

Play time: about 45 minutes for two playthroughs, counting time with the broken original version.