Phoenix Springs is an interesting take on the point-and-click adventure genre, transforming more into a visual, text-based journey relying on more than enough guesswork to piece together its often nebulous solutions.
Phoenix Springs falls prey to the thing that many other adventure games do: obfuscation.
As players, we fall victim to to the minds of the creator. They piece together the blueprint of their game’s world brick by brick, pasting the puzzle pieces together to hopefully form a cohesive whole.
There must be a nexus point where mechanics are introduced to the player and learned in a way that rewards with a discovery–a build-up of tools and satisfaction. Creators, if they so choose, can throw its players to the wolves and allow them to brute force their way towards a goal, barrelling past any logic.
Preferably, players should feel accomplished when they reach a goal, not puzzled further. And I’ve often found that to be the case in point-and-click adventure games which Phoenix Springs evokes. It’s here developers scatter breadcrumbs along the playing field, asking players to pick them up and sew them together in hopes of moving beyond a door, or breaking down a bridge, or, in the case of Phoenix Springs, figuring out the truth behind your brother’s disappearance.
And both thematically and mechanically, the answers in Phoenix Spring are less than obvious.
About a third of the way into the game’s brief 5-hour journey, Iris Dormer is exploring her brother Leo’s home looking for a code to get past the keypad on the door blatantly housing the next leg of progression in her search. At one point I thought I had clicked on every valid piece of scenery, interacted varying clues with each other, and tugged on my hair a few times wondering what thing I was missing to make an obvious connection.
You see, that’s always the issue. You know what you’re supposed to do but you haven’t yet fulfilled the requirements set by the developer and the game. And, to be fair, I had missed a faint red note meant to pop in the bleak void of Leo’s dark home. It was stuck on the fridge. And that simple note provided me another piece of the puzzle that I thought was the key. But it wasn’t. Funnily, players are supposed to find enough clues to get past the keypad, yet all those options are wrong, forcing a password reset that requires additional puzzling to move past.
Phoenix Springs often frustrated me a few times not because I felt particularly dumb but because I merely couldn’t figure out how developer Calligram Studio wanted me to push forward.
Iris Dormer is an investigative journalist in a near-future society that is primarily glimpsed from the outside looking in. A few key details peppered across Phoenix Springs crack the door open for players to wonder how advanced or dystopian this world is as there are only a handful of true glimpses. During my playthrough, there was a meager sense of what kind of journalism Iris delved into. But more importantly it offers the gameplay foundation of Phoenix Springs.
Rather than implementing a traditional inventory system, Calligram Studio uses Iris’ brain as the box containing all the important “items” that players use to solve puzzles. With a right click of the mouse players conjure up a stark white box that houses words and phrases in black text representing various leads and threads Iris can use to make connections. Players can select these mind inventory items and hover the mouse over a point of interest, another person, or even Iris herself. Iris does a lot of the heavy lifting and offers to reject or encourage players’ thought process, potentially shutting down an inexplicable connection or hinting that players may be on the right path.
In one instance, players are attempting to cull Leo’s library for information and can apply prior knowledge of his written works to pull two books off the shelf. Diving into Iris’ mental inventory, players can then apply whatever they would like to these books in hope she will scan them for pertinent information or perhaps a new keyboard.
There are times where this unobtrusive, relatively intuitive system feels great to use. Logical threads open up new avenues and curious players may wish to make connections just to hear Iris’ commentary. However, there are times where the multitude of options jumble together as players who become lost–or insistent they are on the right path–keep clicking back and forth between Iris’ brain box and the world around her hoping that she will mutter the next new inventory piece. In one instance, Iris needed to interact with both a computer to queue up information and the screen where that information was displayed, both potentially offering new avenues of progression. But with both objects being so close to each other, it was easy to mistakenly select the wrong thing, requiring a delve back into the cerebellum.
Obtuse is fine. Countless puzzle games require solutions that have players undergo varying forms of mental gymnastics. But I did experience unwanted friction a few times in Phoenix Springs that not only halted progression but made me feel somewhat stupid. A handful of times the scene will literally change to the next event when Iris gets all the information she needs. But what happens when you think you’ve turned over every stone? The obvious answer is that you’re missing something. In these moments of mental block, I graciously appreciated Iris calling out that she had already linked one thread or another but wished there was a visual indicator telling me as such so I wouldn’t have to listen to repeated dialog. One section of the game had me repeatedly walking back and forth across four screens certain that I had seen everything and attempted to make every connection. Little did I know that I needed to click on a rock formation in the background that was tangentially linked to a clue.
The issue with a puzzle like this is that Calligram Studio had made that section of the game a mostly two-dimensional space where Iris primarily walked back and forth along a train track. At one point I accidentally navigated her in the background and she got stuck, requiring me to restart the game in my attempt to push against Phoenix Springs‘ logic. How would I know that clicking on a background object would trigger Iris’s ability to walk beyond her assumed depths to the next part of the game?
A great deal of pacing back and forth between screens might be a hallmark of the point-and-click genre, especially when players aimlessly trying to think out the solution… but it’s not a quality I care for much. In fact, the latter half of the game will find players walking around numerous screens with only a handful of people and objects that are actually tied to progression and puzzle solutions. Some scenes are shot pulled far back, others are closer, more intimate. But when Iris can take several seconds to cross one edge of a navigable space to the next, compounding that across confusion, curiosity, and genuine puzzle solving, it can wear on a player’s patience. This is especially true when the “puzzles” in this section of the game are more heady, requiring players to truly think outside the box of logic. Thankfully the player and Iris can combine forces to become one stubborn, metaphysical investigator.
Speed bumps be damned, I never really let these lengthy, weird puzzles dampen my overall experience, even when I knew they were coming.
Phoenix Springs is truly a gorgeous game, one that would have maybe benefited from a genre swap or more passive input from the player’s mental fortitude. Scenes are packed with negative space whether that be fuzzy blacks or brilliant yellows. Objects of interest–for the most part–are saturated in reds and bluish whites that scream for attention off the screen. It’s a stylized world that drips with the ambition and boundless creativity of a child’s crayon drawing where the brightest-colored wax is smeared on the thickest of card stock paper.
Ambient music reeks with a subtle violence and danger that often triggers after a revelation, right before the player knows they are about to open an uncertain door. Iris’ world’s tucked-away futurism is masked by darkness and only visible faintly through the bits of technology observed in the distance or thrust into the foreground. This is a world where stasis pods keep people alive, youths have sleep deprivation parties in abandoned universities, and the mind isn’t as closed-off as one might think.
The sole voice in Phoenix Springs is Iris’. She narrates everything, even relays what other characters say back to the player. Could she be an unreliable narrator? Potentially. Voiced by Alex Anderson Crow–who at first I thought was Claudia Black–Iris is calm, somewhat stern, and relatively objective to the events unfolding before her. Crow’s demeanor and delivery are hushed and guarded but analytical enough that players have their knowledge satiated. In harmony with the visuals, Iris’ character was the other highlight of Phoenix Springs.
As the story begins to ratchet up and transform into a more surreal journey, I found myself warming up to the memory of numerous quick-cut cinematics and visuals from Phoenix Springs. Though the game may prop itself up as a mystery, very little happens in the actual narrative. There are a few key moments in the story and revelations to be had but it is primarily a tone piece that feels about many things but those things are broad concepts and musings rather than hard-line philosophies and facts. Patient players may feel more of a payoff or reward about those lightbulb moments that may befuddle others. The ending revelation may be a thing of beauty for some or merely another rabbit hole for others. If anything, Phoenix Springs the game is as nebulous as Phoenix Springs the place in the game.
Phoenix Springs is not a transformative point-and-click adventure game. While it offers a unique “inventory” mechanic, its ebb and flow are still dictated by the whims of the player’s propensity for thinking outside literal and figurative boxes and a developer who crafts the solutions within. Though it may frustrate those who approach it casually, a stellar visual palette may offer enough enticement to look up solutions online as a lubricant towards progressing the narrative. Deep within its recesses, Phoenix Springs is beautiful and perplexing but to many it will always be a mystery.
