Take me to Phoenix Springs.
I didn't make it to the remote desert oasis and its mysterious community of misfits while playing phoenix springs demo at Summer Game Fest, but after spending a brief time in the neo-noir world of Iris Dormer, I'm desperate to get there. I want to know what happened to Iris's brother, a man I have only heard about in strange and sad stories. I want to hear Iris's voice articulate in my ear, providing gruff context for each scene. I'm ready to lose myself again in the sickly green shadows of the game. I am very curious to know what awaits me in the desert. Take me back.
phoenix springs is a point-and-click detective game starring Iris Dormer, a reporter searching for her estranged brother Leo. Her search eventually takes her beyond the city's crumbling skyscrapers and across the desert, to an oasis community called Phoenix Springs. Iris investigates the area and the people in it using an inventory of mental notes, collecting ideas rather than physical objects as clues.
The Summer Game Fest demo covered the beginning stages of the game, featuring Iris on a train and in the city, only teasing the oddities that might be hidden in the desert community of Phoenix Springs. Every scene in the game is a work of art and Iris is its historian, revealing threads of relationships and stories as she reads documents and gathers information from strangers. In any situation, she has three interaction options: talk with, look at, use.
Iris's mental inventory fills with names, dates, places, and obscurities as she unpacks boxes, searches the web, and tries to talk to her brother's former neighbors. Leo's last address is a building that has been boarded up, abandoned by its owners mid-renovation, and here he meets the people left behind. There's a boy making a plant dance with some sort of electronic box, and a middle-aged man lying unconscious on top of a shipping container. They are called orphans and none of them are willing to talk. On the other side of the building, an intercom houses a separate voice that shares the history of the area, filling Iris's inventory with words. Selecting an idea allows Iris to investigate her environment with that information, narrowing her focus and often unlocking solutions. It's a clean, familiar investigation mechanic presented in an absolutely beautiful format.
phoenix springs it is wonderful. Without a doubt. His canvas is menacing: dark green backgrounds are streaked with even deeper shadows, while splashes of yellow, red and blue define the edges of important scenes. The inventory bursts onto the screen as a bright white screen with black text, individual ideas separated by delicate thought bubbles. There's a papery sheen to the entire experience, as if it were an interactive rendition of the cover of a mid-century sci-fi novel.
When the game lacks color, Iris provides it through narration, and her verbal palette is as austere as the game's appearance. She speaks dispassionately and with an elegant nihilism that would be at home in an Orson Welles detective noir. Her voice is comforting and foreboding, and she is a welcome and almost constant companion on the show.
In the middle of a trade show full of attractive games, I wanted to continue playing phoenix springsand that's pretty much the highest praise I can give. phoenix springs It feels completely unique. Is coming to steam on September 16, developed and published by London-based art collective Calligram Studio.
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