In late 2022, 3D animator Elizabeth Caingcoy completed the unheralded indie horror game Signalis and needed to talk to someone. Immediately. “The game resonated with me so intensely it was like I had to scream from the rooftops,” she says. Over the next few months, she created a number of stunning fan animations celebrating the game, springboarding a new wave of appreciation among Signalis’ queer fandom.
Caingcoy’s animations soon made their way to a fellow Southeast Asian 3D animator who creates under the name Atelier. Atelier became an even more prolific contributor to the community, establishing the fandom’s reputation as a place for women, nonbinary, and queer folks to find hope and connect. The community was small, but mighty—and growing.
When it was released in 2022, Signalis picked up some awards and a few critical raves. But its most devoted players fell for it over time, desperate to unpack the feelings the game left them with. Its dark narrative hides a fragile, tragic lesbian romance that captivates all who discover it. Now, this fast-growing enclave has become notorious for celebrating the power of defiant queer love beyond the dystopian cosmic terror of Signalis itself.
This devotion is evident in the numbers: In March, moderators of the game's subreddit surveyed more than 300 players and found that 38 percent identified as trans; 11 percent described themselves as questioning. Some 23 percent identified as gay or lesbian, 46 percent as bisexual or pansexual, and a further 20 percent recorded some kind of nonstraight answer.
The question is, why has this eerie cocktail of cosmic horror and queerness struck such a chord?
Developed by rose-engine, an indie studio in Hamburg, Germany, composed of just two developers, Yuri Stern and Barbara Wittmann, Signalis is a labor of love that was first conceived of more than 10 years ago. Most of its main characters are women looking for lost loved ones while being embattled by eldritch space terror.
This indie horror game not only provided chills down the spine but also unexpectedly sparked a queer hopepunk movement, rewriting expectations of storytelling in gaming and offering players an underdog triumphant narrative.
