Developer: Calligram Studio
Publisher: Calligram Studio
Year: 2024
Genre: Adventure
Phoenix Springs is a neo-noir point-and-click adventure game where you play as a woman in search of your missing estranged brother. I knew very little about this game going into it, other than it being developed over a long period of time, but picked it up based on really liking the art and it ended up being one of my favorite adventure games from 2024. It’s hard to explain more about the story, partially to avoid spoilers but also because it’s a very surreal story told in a non-traditional way, but I actually liked that a lot. I was talking about the game on Mastodon and Andrew Plotkin (who liked the game) described the game as “Philip K. Dick took the good acid,” which I think is a good description of the game’s story. Some people on Steam were critical of not full understanding the story but I liked that.
Since the game is a detective story, the game has a really interesting mechanic where you are basically using ideas and memories as inventory items. I loved that you’re using these “items” in a way that you would like an inventory item. There’s a lot of interesting side investigations as well that don’t advance the main plot but do reveal more about the world. There’s also a lot of red herring thoughts that aren’t used and get crossed out once you’re out of an area that is no longer relevant.
If I do have any criticisms, I do thing the last section of the game is too big and aimless. I had felt like I was doing the adventure game thing where I just try every item on everything and repeating that a bit. It was a little frustrating since the rest of the game moves as a pretty fast pace. The game even includes a builtiin walkthrough which I think is nice.
I think the voice acting also deserves a shoutout. It’s all narrated by the same woman and it has kind of a more deadpan or monotone delivery, but it works really well. Even the dialog from other characters is voice acted from the viewpoint of the main character.
I just think it’s a really solid mystery and think it’s worth a look if you want an adventure game that is willing to experiment a bit more.
Phoenix Springs is available on Steam, GOG, and Fireflower Games.