Review | Phoenix Springs - An Atmospheric Triumph With A Few Notable Quirks
Phoenix Springs is a point-and-click mystery for the modern age. Its strengths and weaknesses alike echo its developer’s focus on creating the most atmospheric interactive experience you could hope for. From start to finish, from click to investigative click, and whether you like it or not, Phoenix Springs is going to dish up its atmosphere at every turn and let you poke around within it – to memorable effect.
Calligram, the game’s developer, describes itself as “more of a garage band than a game studio.” It’s a very small team from the UK, and the DIY spirit of such a setup shows through in Phoenix Springs’ handmade quality. A stunning take on the neo-noire setting of much dystopian fiction, Phoenix Springs follows journalist Iris on her quest to find her brother Leo in a city suffused with strange scribblings, smashed tech, and boarded-up windows. Within this context, Calligram’s ability to lean into their stylistic choices is on full display. The game is illustrated to appear both hand-drawn and carefully considered, and a surprising amount of the environment is interactive, placing Phoenix Springs firmly outside of the visual novel genre.
Indeed, the closest comparison I can muster for this game is Disco Elysium – just without its RPG elements and 3-D art, and that’s pretty high praise. In fact, I think I would like Elysium much better if it were more like Phoenix Springs, as I often thought the dice rolls added randomness to the acclaimed 2017 game’s story that felt more like a hindrance than interesting friction. I digress; the point is that Phoenix Springs is in good company, and there are many compelling reasons to experience it for yourself. Let’s have a look at those now.
The way the game’s art projects its moody, atmospheric vibe throughout its narrative arc makes each new discovery feel rewarding. From its camera angles down to its colour pallet, Phoenix Springs is just as stylish as the post-punk university students depicted within it. Iris is a white being walking through a dark and almost psychedelic wasteland. Pertinent clues are usually denoted in muted shades of red and yellow, and the rest of the environment – some of which is still clickable – is coloured in hues of void-black and forest green. The game’s art adds angst to a story already filled with uncertainty and hard-boiled investigative inquiry, as Iris thumbs her way through the bioethical problems that plague the post-environmental, highly-scientific society her brother had a hand in creating.
Phoenix Springs’ interface is another of the game’s bright spots. Optimised for mouse and keyboard, the interface makes it easy to access Iris’ concrete thoughts – which appear as phrases in a word box – and to combine them with clues you find in the environment. When you hit on a successful combination, say a pair of coordinates and the map on which they are displayed, Iris narrates her finding, and you often unlock another key phrase to work with. Once you’ve followed a lead to its logical conclusion, the key phrase that it’s associated with is greyed out, making it easy for players to keep track of loose ends. Otherwise, the game consists of clicking around to move Iris through its hand-drawn environment and interact with objects using three simple verbs: “Talk To,” “Look At,” and “Use.” It’s simple and elegant, just as it should be. Such a frictionless experience when it comes to Phoenix Springs’ interface elements is extremely necessary – because that’s not where the challenge should come from in a game like this. The challenge in a mystery game should come along with the experience of investigation. Luckily, Phoenix Springs has secrets enough to satisfy even the most sedulous of video game sleuths.
Because it doesn’t hold your hand, there’s no tutorial, and from the outset, Calligram has made the conscious choice to set players free to figure things out for themselves. It’s great! The mystery of Leo’s whereabouts and clandestine projects forces players to take cognitive leaps and connect key terms to objects that they sleuth out in the environment. There’s plenty of thinking to do, and some of the connections take a good amount of patient investigation to uncover, which I think is extremely necessary for a game that sets out to tell a mystery story. Phoenix Springs crushes this element of its gameplay, and doesn’t fall into the trap of not trusting its audience enough to solve its winding narrative puzzle. Instead, it presents a beautiful game that begs patience and just the right amount of thought. The kind of experience that sometimes requires you to get up from your computer, brew yourself some tea, and have a walk around the block to clear your mind before diving back in.
As you can imagine, then, a certain amount of trial and error is necessary for Iris’ “thought process” to click. When you connect one of her key phrases to an object in the environment, she’ll talk herself through how tenable such a connection could actually turn out to be. In fact, the whole game is essentially just Iris talking to herself. We’ll get to the voice acting and sound design of this choice later, but at this juncture, I’d just like to praise the sheer amount of work and planning that went into Iris’ responses to phrase-object combinations. She has a unique response for most of these combos as you move throughout the game, which is a very cool feature to see from an indie developer. For instance, when you combine the thought “password” with the object interaction “vehicle” at Leo’s house, Iris says to herself, “The licence plates could be passwords, no that’s too far-fetched.” What’s more, some connections even give you little Steam rewards, which are fun easter eggs players can encounter along the way in spite of the fact that they don’t move you any closer to uncovering the game’s core mystery. Bravo, Calligram. We see you putting in the work to insert little bits of magic into what is already a very solid experience.
However, no solid experience is without its flaws, and Phoenix Springs has a few I’d like to touch on.
First, while the game’s soundscape fits its vibe, the way those sounds have been mixed together alongside Iris’ voiceovers is sometimes off, especially when there is a louder noise that’s supposed to be happening in the background. For instance, in the opening scene, you can barely hear Iris over disorienting static. Later on, the rain falling outside Leo’s house all but drowns out Iris’ vocalised thoughts when you’re investigating the surroundings. I can see how there could be an argument here about how such mixing decisions represent conscious choices to heighten the game’s dystopian elements. However, when a game’s information is delivered completely through voiceover, you need to be able to hear its narrating voice clearly at all times. Full stop. There’s also, of course, the way such a choice limits the game’s accessibility, as those in the deaf community likely will not be able to experience it without subtitles.
While Phoenix Springs’ art is one of its strongest qualities, the way that art is animated sometimes appears overly jerky, especially when Iris is walking around a particularly busy scene. The effect that is created makes Iris appear robotic, and combined with her husky voice and slinking backside, there’s an undeniable injection of the male gaze into the game’s depiction of its protagonist that pulled me out of its fiction at times. That said, voice actor, Alexandra Brown does a pretty good job, and though Iris can sometimes feel more like a cypher than a fully fleshed-out character, the effect created by the analytical way she views the world jives with – you guessed it – the atmosphere that Phoenix Springs appears to prize above all else.
Unfortunately, that atmosphere does come with its own set of downsides. Namely in its object interaction and pace. As far as object interaction goes, it’s sometimes quite easy to tell what clues are of interest in the environment based on proper sign-posting the developers have inserted into the game through their use of colour. However, other times clues appear to be hidden in plain sight when the coloration technique is subverted or made purposefully opaque. While this does add to the experience’s friction and can sometimes make finding a particularly out-of-the-way clue satisfying, I also found it contributing to confusion and a lack of trust in the game, which is a slippery slope when it comes to a mystery. My only note on pace is that Iris’ walking speed is too slow. That choice forces you to appreciate the beauty and detail the developers have chosen to imbue the game’s environments with. However, it makes the necessary process of travelling back and forth from clue to clue pretty arduous at points when you have to cover a lot of ground. I noticed this most viscerally within the University set piece.
A compliment sandwich always tastes best when it comes to reviews, so I’ll leave you with this: I’d recommend the game despite its blemishes. Phoenix Springs is a self-contained experience with something to say, and these kinds of games don’t come around as often as I’d like them to. You’d do well to support Calligram’s garage band vibe and dive into Iris’ story for yourself. The secrets there may surprise you. Of that, though, I can’t be sure. What I can guarantee is that you’ll be floored by the game’s atmosphere and the narrative payoff contained within its shadowy depths.
Pros:
Masterful atmosphere
Art and vibe on point
Elegant interface
Pleasing cognitive friction
Unique use of voiceover
Cons:
Uneven soundscape mixing
Occasional jittery animation
Inconsistent sign-posting
