Signet City – futuristic parasites feed off 80s social realism in dystopian RPG
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- Gareth Damian Martin unveiled Signet City, their next narrative RPG, with a planned 2027 launch — an unusually early reveal that breaks with the developer's prior pattern of releasing games first.
- Players control a parasite that awakens inside a host called Sid as she wakes in a river, and from there moves between multiple hosts, each tethered to their own district of the city.
- Gameplay uses tabletop-style dice mechanics tied to each host's emotions — angering a host in a pub argument, for example, makes it easier to kick down a door — with a limited pool of daily actions and separate objectives for parasite and host.
- The visual style is strictly monochrome, pairing hand-drawn characters with photographic environments treated through a grain-heavy post-processing effect, directly inspired by 80s social photographer Tish Murtha.
- The setting blends sci-fi with 1980s northern English city life, with Martin citing the winter of discontent as a long shadow over the present day and naming Perdido Street Station and Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris novels as literary touchstones.
- Martin built their reputation on 2020's In Other Waters and the two Citizen Sleeper games (2022 and 2025), minimalist sci-fi titles widely cited as proof that indie developers are pushing the more interesting ideas in the medium.
Why it matters: Signet City's 2027 launch — announced years in advance for an indie — and its parasite-possession premise drawn from Tish Murtha's 80s social photography signal Martin's most ambitious and literary swing yet, following two well-received Citizen Sleeper games that established their devoted niche following.
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