Phoenix Springs

Downloaded the demo and was compelled to buy the full game and play it from start to finish in one sitting. Incredible atmosphere (art, music, writing) that suited the esoteric story. Am I fully sure what happened? No. Was I intrigued and immersed all the way through? Yes. Absolutely worth your time if you're interested in these types of games.

Equally fascinating and frustrating experience, though I couldn't stop playing, so I guess it's a "recommend".

Really enjoyable! Love the investigative mixed with surrealism.

A good example of a game that focuses heavily on artistic flair and narrative expression than gameplay fidelity.

Good:
-Unique artstyle, colors help to create this vibrant yet unsettling world.
-VA delivery was stellar in moodsetting and empathy
-Ideas system was quite novel, although sometimes a bit clunky.
-How the story was told has a good hook to it, was engaged by the mystery throughout even despite some of the clunky puzzles.

Cons:
-Lack of QoL. Some of the maps are large open spaces, travelling across was ok the first time but the nth time it becomes a chore. I think it would be ok if I could have a skip over option after a while or just jump.
-Some of the puzzle designs are quite unintuitive. There are also several red herrings that appear, which helps with the worldbuilding, but definitely slows down the pacing of the game to a crawl.
Examples are like triggering the security reset instead of finding the actual password. Or only being able to trigger the mason's job through interacting with the kiln instead of the broken bridge.

I think I'm putting this as a do not recommend even though this is a good story, is that its not really a good game. I feel like if you were to make a short animated movie/video, cut out some of the scenes here and you would have had a better experience. Alternatively, there could be more puzzles/exploration on Iris and Leo's stories to flesh them out for a longer game experience. This feels like a meet in the middle that weakens the best of both sides of the experience.

Bizarre and otherworldly. A fascinating experience, even if it has a few rough edges.

I knew I needed to play this game when someone in another review compared it to watching a Lynch movie. After completing the game, I can say that it is accurate. Phoenix Spring is a visually and aurally beautiful game that is at times more akin to a fever dream. It is a unique experience that I would recommend for lovers of the wonderful and strange!

Just finished Phoenix Springs. The game reminded me of the point-and-click games I used to play when I was a kid, the kind in which you would have to click and try everything to advance to the next puzzle. This game has been on my backlog ever since I caught a glimpse of it late last year. Its premise and art style really grabbed my attention and didn’t let go.

And after playing it I can say it lived up to the hype. The art style is one of the most unique I've seen in a while - it oozes style, and the story with its noir-twists, dreamlike vibes and a heavy "leave it to interpretation" approach really "matched" my freak. A couple of times it surprised me how fast the time had passed while I searched for answers in the different places the game takes place.

The only downside is that it is a little bit TOO much like the games that I used to play when I was a kid. There are a couple of puzzles that I feel are a drag to get through and that unless you jump into a guide online you would get stuck in there forever... or throwing everything at the wall until something sticks. I'm ashamed to admit I used the walkthrough with solutions to some puzzles that appears on the "Tips" menu more times than I would have liked.

Overall, Phoenix Springs had me hooked - I wanted to see what happened next in the story and untangle the mystery of what happened Leo Dormer alongside Iris. If you have patience to spare, don't mind feeling lost and enjoy movies like Inception or Memento - then this game is for you.

I've never reviewed a game before, let alone this early into playing it (1 Hour). This really grabbed me. It's art. It's a novella. It is not your regular point & click, it is better. Well done to everyone involved in this project. Buy it, open your mind, and enjoy.

Truly one of the most aesthetically-pleasing adventure games I've ever played. A gorgeous art style, coupled with a challenging, layered narrative that invites various interpretations and encourages multiple playthroughs. Highly recommended.

A point-and-click adventure/detective game with fresh mechanics. The story is really muddled the whole way through, it's one of my first experiences with this type of "weird"/"surreal" fiction. Although some ideas the story expresses can be grasped on a first playthrough, most things are hidden behind layers of cryptic language and imagery. Even though I got lost several times during the game, not knowing exactly what to do, I actually didn't need any outside help, thinking about things in different ways for a bit always produced a solution, which is always a good thing in these types of games. Recommend it to anybody willing to dive in a strange universe.

i was really looking forward to this one since i first played the demo. the design is brilliant and voice acting is top notch, unfortunately the puzzles are frustrating & unintuitive, and the story opaque & difficult to follow. can’t recommend it for the price

Phoenix Springs has one of my favorite presentations of a story in a game from the last several years. Stylistically I haven't seen any other game like it, so to see it nailed the first time was great. I had some frustrations with puzzle design, but now that several months have passed, those frustrations feel much less significant than they did in the moment. The visuals, writing, acting, atmosphere, etc. are a much brighter spot in comparison. Narrative elements like these are not everyone's cup of tea but if you're looking at this game there's a decent chance you value narrative in games higher than most.

It's strange, it's very strange, from the flat 3d graphics to the deadpan talk of the protagonist and the futuristic time which seemingly loops?
I have yet to finish it, I find most puzzles unintuitive and for now my favourite part was the one before getting to the eponymous springs.
Still, this is a good head scratcher, good if you enjoyed some puzzles that make little sense while making sense in the game's strange reality.
UI is great tho. And you get an online guide that sometimes helps, sometimes no.

it was an interesting experience, and one we rather enjoyed. Definitely head scratching at times though, and invites more of a meditative approach. Not a game I would pick if you expect immediate transparency, but rather one that elicits and rewards analysis and introspection.

loved the visuals and ambiance, even though I got lost in the springs.
definitely recommend

I totally fell in love with this game. The visual style, the writing, the overall mood, the wild surrealism, the way the dialogue/inventory system played with themes of searching and memory... it worked beautifully for me.

It's not going to resonate with everyone. This is fine. Whether or not Phoenix Springs hits the right note for you will depend greatly on your personal taste. There are plenty of weird games that I can't get into because they're the wrong variety of weirdness for me. (And others that would have been great if the mechanics hadn't annoyed me too much.)

This one completely won me over. Absolute work of art. Heartily recommended.

With a look this stunning I'm not sure how this managed to fly under the radar. I love the unique point and click-ish mechanics, but even more love the story and presentation. Something just feels wrong from moment one, and it is never relieved. It's a mystery game in that it is mysterious, not in that you will cleanly solve the scenario and be finished. That kind of deconstruction is really hard to achieve, and here it's done deftly.

I almost quit Phoenix Springs. I grew tired of the long, unskippable animations, especially walking, and some more obscure puzzles, but I also found it difficult to maintain my curiosity in a story that lacks structure (as it often is the case in surreal art), or in the very dry, one-note presentation, with sprinkled-in exhaustively flashing animations, and general bafflement.

I’m glad I kept playing. The combination of the visuals (just LOOK at these screenshots), the writing, the SPECTACULAR one-person voice acting with the narration style it introduced, and the soundscapes that made me think about 1985 Angel’s Egg, kept pulling me in. And also the fact I found a full playthrough on YouTube and it allowed me to find solutions for 4-5 puzzles I just couldn’t get my way through.

I’ve resonated with the parts of the game, including the ending, very strongly. It made me feel like my emotions and worries are seen by others. And that’s a moment of connection only great art, or great friendships, can give me. And while I don’t think Phoenix Springs is a game I would blindly recommend to others - it takes a special kind of person to stick to the end throughout its bullshit - I believe strongly that it’s a great work. And if you try to get outside of the established boundaries, you’re destined to make decisions that some folks will love, some hate, some won’t care about.

I hated small chunks of the game, and loved much, much more of it than I expected.

I don't know why this game isn't selling like hot cakes but I love the story. I love everything about it.
I love how you piece the narrative yourself.
I think this is much more tighter game compared to Obsidian's "Pentiment" and I'm definitely watching if this becomes a movie!

Artful, somber point and click story. Kinda like if Mutazione took place in Twin Peaks Season 3.

I think I may revisit this later, because I 100%-ed it just now, because I don't think I quite understood what was the game trying to tell (I have some theories based on name significance, mythological references etc, but many things don't quite ring a bell with the overarching conclusion... or lack thereof).

And that's while I quite literally tried to use every single word in every single interactible thing just to get all pieces of information available in the game (I had to backup my save a couple of times, because it's very easy to miss permanently some things depending of the order you go with). Even had to reset the game since it was still early enough to do so lol

Regardless of the many loose ends this may have had in my personal experience with it, i do think this was a very artistically compelling game with a pretty interesting approach to point-and-click storytelling and plot progression.

In terms of being a worthwhile unique experience, this game is most definitely one not to be missed, very interesting little game. I do not recommend any completionist to try 100% it without a guide though, every time I greyed-out a word and realized that I had missed an achievement after searching for it in the achievement list (all of which are combinations for possible interactions), I had to restart from my previous back-up (I first started doing resets, and then I started backing-up, as there's no chapter selection or separate saves in this one).

I'm a big fan of point and click games, but this one just wasn't doing it for me. It was way too deadpan, it wasn't exciting at all and the "puzzles" weren't intuitive. Once I got past the desert part I realized that I just didn't care about the game anymore. Only thing I liked about the game was the art style, but unfortunately it's not enough to keep me playing.

I adored this game.

The artistic style was unique and I thought perfectly delivered a sense of dread beneath a surface of beauty. The story grabbed me from the beginning and held me until the end. I really enjoyed the interaction mechanic of generating leads to track down and pair with different parts of the environment. I thought that added a lot of combinations that made you think and didn't handhold.

I'm also not a technical critic, I'm not going to nitpick mechanics or development. I go off how something made me feel. I thought the voice acting was hilarious and perfectly executed. It was understated in a way that fit the mood of the game. It was so funny to put together two obvious clues irrelevant to the current task only to hear Iris bluntly say "Yes.". The only buggy interaction I ran into personally was double clicking on an area that would take you to a new "scene" only for it to flash and take you back to the previous one. But that was rare and I only noticed it late game.

I've read some of the negative reviews and maybe some of those issues were fixed during my playthrough because I never really hit any of them (or at least wasn't bothered by some of the things mentioned). I found double clicking to run to be just fine. The game is so atmospheric and the environment plays such an important role in the overall impact of the game that I'm not sure why rushing through it or finding the shortest path is of importance.

I will say that I think you should be comfortable with the uncomfortable and be ok with not having answers spoon fed to you to enjoy this game. I finished my first play though and understood a good bit, but I also was left with a lot of questions and thinking "wow I want to play this again to see it from the beginning through a completely different lens".

With so many games leveraging similar textures and character builds, I want more of this. Thank you Calligram Studio.

Please do not mistake this as hate. I generally do enjoy it a lot, and I believe it has great potential. It's just to my heart I can't recommend it to anyone.
To me, Phoenix Spring has a great concept, but it is not sure where it wants to go. Until the end, all I got was it trying to tell me "it's telling something," but I am not sure even the game knows its message. It feels like the typical mystery sci-fi show that has a great start but doesn't know where to land, and at the end, when they try to reveal the mystery, the mystery is a mystery, that it's expressing "I am expressing something".
To make things worse, it's not designed as a game. It has minimum instruction, and the sound effects sometimes overlap with the voice acting. It makes things really difficult and frustrating - and if the game asks you to choose to have subtitles or not, all can be changed. It's just bad that the key communication medium of this game is voice acting, and half of the time, this voice is barely hearable.

If you are looking for a unique, unusual gaming experience, go for it. But other than that, I really couldn't recommend it.

review edited to be less mean and verbose

the adventure game friction is uncompelling and even if you're going to do it to an extent for aesthetic, it goes overboard still. did not finish due to frustration with that. felt uncompelled by the prologue(?), and a softlock in a particularly frustrating area immediately after it sealed it-- which i'm not happy about because i would've liked to have seen what the game has to say, wherever it was going. seemed sincere.

Stunning neo-noir. Visuals to stay with you long past the credits. Writing on par with Kentucky Route Zero in places, albeit with fewer answers. Intentionally less coherent. Deliberately deceptive in places. A bit of a drag toward the end. Worth it.

a gorgeous and thoughtful cyberpunk fever dream. really trusts the player and gives them a lot to think about once all is said and done.

favourite quote (paraphrased): "she said she had twenty years of experience. i said she'd had one year of experience twenty times. she didn't like that very much."

Phoenix Springs is a surreal, sci-fi point and click adventure about a journalist looking for her younger brother. The reserved and minimalist tone created by the outstanding use of negative spaces in the striking art direction and sound design created one of the unique experiences I've played in the genre.

The story brought Lynch's Lost Highway to mind where it leaves you with more questions than answers by the time you reach the end. You can see there's enough clues left about that someone more intelligent than myself could piece together. Definitely needs multiple playthroughs if you want to do that.
Or you can just enjoy the trippy ride and maybe get the jist of things.

The puzzles were on the easier side. You connect concepts in the character's mind to things on screen. Was generally "logical" enough. There's an in-game guide in the pause screen if you get stuck.

My only gripe was that due to the art style not everything clickable was easy to see or just see at all. I had to hover the cursor over everywhere on the screen to see if there was something invisible I could interact with. A cycle or show-interactables key would be greatly appreciated.

So yeah, I do recommend this game to those who enjoy more experimental games.

This is a work of art, the animations and sound design in particular are absolutely stunning, I recommend playing this with your headphones to get the best effect.

Mechanically this is a traditional point&click adventure, some puzzles are a bit obtuse, but the devs provided a link in the game to a complete, spoiler-free walkthrough. Don't hesitate to take a peek if you get stuck, so as not to break the flow of the narrative. Treat it like a 4,5hrs experimental sci-fi film.

dreamy, gorgeous, smart

A somewhat abstract, unique point and click game that finds you investigating a mysterious oasis.
It was a really great play, would definitely recommend it.

A mesmerising game — from the core idea to its details, from the voice to the meaning of eternal re:birth. After the first playthrough, it seems as if I've only touched the surface of what lies hidden in its dark waters.
In my opinion, the inability to return to a certain moment is what makes this game so valuable.

I just finished this and loved it. It’s more like an deconstructed sci-fi novel than a game; for fans of Phillip K Dick, Gene Wolfe and anything quantum…

Huge respect and admiration to all at Calligram fStudio or making such a brilliantly absorbing, beautifully mysterious world.

Highly recommend for fans of Kentucky Route Zero and Norco.

This game absolutely rules. Cool art style, music fits the story and imagery very well, interesting twist on typical adventure game mechanics (having concepts of things that you use rather than actual items), an obtuse but compelling story set in a fascinating vision of the future. Weird as hell, and if you don't like ambiguity in your storytelling this may not be for you, but I loved it.

Okay, so I’ve read a few other reviewers’ opinions and as someone who has been obsessed with cracking the mystery of this game, here is what I would recommend:

DO NOT PLAY IF

• You want all your answers neatly wrapped in a bow
• You can’t deal with frustration and the odd obtuse puzzle
• You hate the pace and mechanics of classic point and click games

DO PLAY IF

• You want to experience something that no other game has ever done before
• You want to immerse yourself in a stunning work of art, including words, images and sounds
• You want to dig deep into the fan theories and layers and layers of meaning people like myself and others have found in the game…

Hope this helps other players here. All in all this is probably one my favorite gaming experiences of the year and I'll be first in line to buy whatever this team is cooking up next.

This is a bit of a mixed bag but ultimately end on the positive side. Gorgeous artstyle and great music but a gameplay system that's equal parts innovative as it is fiddly. On paper it's a great idea for a investigation game, but it's also slow and a bit cumbersome.

The writing is on point and tells a interesting mystery but the game also lack some things that are just baffling that they where left out. There are no manual saves (seriously devs, there is NO reason to not let the players save whenever they want). You can't even restart the game from the begining if you have started playing, yes you read that right. There is no way outside of manually deleting the save file from your computer to start from the beginning. Why? A chapter selector after you finished the game would help a lot if someone wants to pick up achievements or replay one specific part of the game to explore some more.

The game also automatically moves you to a new area (often when you have found the address of a new object in your investigation) and there isn't any way to go back. This is annoying for two reasons, first the games achievements consists of using one of your clues on something else, again, great idea for a mystery game. But they are pretty random (unless you read the names of the hidden achievements) and since you can't make manual saves you will have to start from the beginning (and you can only do that after you finished the game), but even if you don't care for achievements you do lose out on some background information if you accidentally trigger the scene transition before investigating everything.

So to summarize, it's strong points are what matters the most, (art, sound, writing) and the weaker parts are mostly about the UI, some quality of life issues and to some part the mechanics for the gameplay. A perfect example that a game needs not only artists, but also people who focus on the "boring" technical parrts of a game,

I have no idea what I just played. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the story after the 3rd chapter. At that point, the game goes downhill quick. The story is so hard to follow, I don't even think the developers know what the plot is. The game-play is painful. Iris moves incredibly slow across the screen, it discourages you from backtracking at all. The art style is very interesting but after about an hour the constantly moving texture elements give me a headache. The ending of the game makes no sense either since the story is so hard to follow. I'm not sure what sort of underlying message or theme the developers thought they were conveying but they missed the mark completely.

TL;DR - Story hard to follow. Makes no sense at all. Headache inducing textures.

I had been waiting to play Phoenix Springs for a long time, and I wasn't disappointed.

I love how the game foregoes a traditional inventory system to focus on topics instead, which makes all the sense considering Iris is a journalist. The premise of using said topics (or thoughts) to gather more information or unlocking new topics and realizations is also very fresh, just like the game's superb visuals.

I especially liked Iris's dry narration. As the game progresses, the droning of her voice becomes a companion to the story as much as the character of Iris herself. That the dialogue from other characters is also filtered through her point of view, as we never hear another voice during the entire game, is a stroke of genius. I also like that Iris's dry delivery prevents the game from getting too verbose, a fault I find to be too common in too many games these days.

The story gives the player ample room for consideration and interpretation. I'm not sure I got all of it myself, but I greatly appreciate that the game respect's the player's intelligence, trusting that the player will engage not only with the text, but with the environments and every other aspect of the work.

In short, I'd say we need more games like this, and I'm glad Phoenix Springs exists. I'll be thinking about it for a good time.

Beautiful. Haunting.
Will be thinking about it for a while.

The puzzles aren't logic-based so the game ends up being largely trial-and-error.

A beautiful and very strange game. Some locations you can explore more but if you find the way forward before doing so, exploring is lost. You can replay the game but it doesn't seem worth it. Very inetersting story but you are left with many many questions marks.

Fever dream with a great atmosphere. Wish the story was much lengthier, would enjoy getting lost in that world 2-3 times as long.

A gorgeous game that poetically neglects player’s time. Aka “How to Trick Humans by Brilliant Visuals and Extravagant Prose into Forgetting that They are Doing Nothing of Essence but Savoring Those Elements”. You’re going to like it, too. Cheeky developers.

There’s a simple set-up here – you’re an older sister, Iris, that’s in search of long-lost brother who might be involved in a serious scientific undertaking of a rather questionable character. That’s the only simple thing you’ll get in this game, the rest will be so lyrically/philosophically distorted that clinging to this simplicity of a set-up will be something you’d need to take a stab at what’s actually going on. It’s a dreamlike, surreal journey that leaves you in an almost permanent “what the hell is happening” state. I’m still not sure what happened. And I’m still not sure how I managed to enjoy it.

The puzzle element is part of a trickery. While classic in nature, it is somewhat unusual in implementation. We use Iris’ mind/memory as an inventory bar, and the “items” themselves are pieces of information we can combine with environment and other characters for dialogues. It’s quite clever, as the topics fade out once we find a solution, and new ones pop up when we learn something, circumventing the unavoidable awkwardness of carrying 54 items in our pockets or backpacks, as our trained adventure backs accustomed to do. The novelty of having thoughts about things and places instead of crowbars and keys is refreshing. It all comes together logically as well, and you’ll find plethora of options to combine thoughts with anything you’d like and get a unique response.

But here comes the question – do any of the things you do matter? Is there any purpose to all these ever-stylish combinations? Once a relatively intriguing first segment (that you’ll get to discover in the demo and a following chapter) passes, you’re hitting a full-on, liminal Wild West. Did all this gigantic map exploration in pursuit of solving an odd, but at least coherent task, navigating a band of peculiar inhabitants lead anywhere? Or is it a masterful and ruthless design that leads to you understanding of a total futility of everything you’ve just done? Is it trying to tell you something by analogy? The answer, like the truth, is out there. Subjective is the nature of the game.

What is not subjective, I hope, is the gorgeous picture presented in front of you. Deep hues of yellow and red and green frame the retro-like silhouettes with brilliant artistry. Unusual, captivating angles show you eye-stopping visuals with gusto. Combined with going-out-of-your-way cryptic prose, where nothing is remotely helpful (which Iris is aware of) and everything is so poetic that it comes across as a bit self-indulgent, it hits hard over your senses and makes you momentarily forget that you’re running around in circles, obliging borderline-psychopaths (are they even real?), getting nowhere fast. It also appears as too serious about its own self, and a bit of humor – deadpan, irony, absurdity, you pick – would have helped to make it more palatable. Alas. The tone is somber, melancholic and bleak, and it does give a perception of slight artistic pretentiousness despite trying really hard to “invoke something”. Or maybe because of it. Regardless, have you seen that rave scene? It’s magnificent. Here I go, being tricked again.

Speaking of rave – you’d think the game will pull all the stops into roping music to serve its artistic force, but it opts out for leaving you in silence (besides wholesome sound effects) quite often. Too often, in my opinion. I suppose, it’s meant to leave you contemplate - nothing can distract you from what you see and hear from Iris, it’s way too complex already, but I’d rather would’ve gotten distracted, though. It would take an edge off “all too serious” tone of the game, but I was left to ponder in silence. When it comes to Iris, by the way, it’s perfect. Her always tired, resigned and matter-of-fact voice is marvelous. Despite being the only speaking character in the game, she matches the tone of everything that’s happening to a T. Bravo, well-done.

Phoenix Springs, man. I played it, I marveled at it, I questioned it, I raised my eyebrow at it, I raged at it, and I was still largely satisfied with it. It’s peculiar and captivating, and it’s not for everyone. You know, I’m not a huge fan of abstract expressionism, but I can still divide it into two categories. One is where you stare at a painting of two blue lines on a white canvass, or a black square, a red triangle, paint simply spilling over white… And you think there must be a backstory to it, perhaps, something an artist experienced on some acid trip back in the days alone at home, and you’re left to decipher it not knowing any details. And then there’s a complex picture of shapes and colors and gradients and forms that all flow into each other and make you stop. Sure, you might not understand much of it, because you were on your way to marvel at classics, like Rembrandt, but you stop nonetheless, and you look and look, and you start pondering on something that wasn’t in your mind just a second ago… And now you’re successfully tricked.
Congratulations, Phoenix Springs, that’s exactly how you got me.

Haunting, fractured, brain-massaging. Interesting story that you can really dig into, even if it ends before any proper conclusion (which I guess is part of the point). Something to do with memories and personality transplant into new bodies - hence the name Phoenix Springs.

The inventory system of ideas or topics as items is pretty neat and makes you feel like a reporter - asking the right questions and gathering the right information open the way forward. Less about banging things together to see what works, and more about conversation and figuring out connections between things.

The visuals are beautiful and striking, and the music is haunting which really suits the vibe of the game. It makes you feel relaxed, confused and on edge at the same time, and I really dig it.

Great cerebral game that I wish lasted a little bit longer.

A mind bending funky adventure game with a heavy emphasis on the story. Instead of an inventory you carry words and concepts allowing you to interrogate the world, the people around you, and your own internalised thoughts. The only thing with it which caused some frustration is that the game has a habit of zooming you to the next location as soon as you figure out some critical information without you having any say about it. This made the narrative flow nicely but it also meant I constantly had to leave behind a lot of unexplored threads I had intended on following up on which made me feel like I missed a bunch of the story just because I combined concept A with X before I combined B with X for flavour. I assume it is meant for multiple playthroughs but it feels a bit annoying since from what I can tell nothing actually changes and I would have rather exhausted it in one go.

All in all though, well worth it in my opinion, it is a point and click that really tries something different.

love the artstyle and story. some point-and-clicks fall into the trap of feeling very hand-holding but, this one felt like you had a lot of freedom and room to breathe, as if you were actually in the story with Iris.

An amazing experience in all senses. The atmosphere is stunning thanks to the sparse sound design, the stylized visuals and the strangely detached but incredibly effective voiceover. The clue/concept system is a clever twist on the tradicional point and click inventory mechanic, and the story... well. The less said about it, the better, since the whole point is to discover it little by little and try to make sense of all the fragments. "Are games art?". When they are like Phoenix Springs, yes. Yes, they are.

Audio and visuals are beautiful. Vibes are off the charts. Story is compelling. Puzzles are solid for the most part (there were one or two instances where I felt I didn't know exactly what the game wanted from me, but I got through them with a bit of perseverance). Overall a great experience.

Great game