Phoenix Springs (2024)

hrmm. hrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmm. ok. ok.

following games like dear esther or (to a lesser extent) virginia, there have been some games that are both highly metaphorical and bluntly uninterested in explaining themselves. there are also some that plop an explanation at the end and suffer for it (strangeland, inmost, stories untold). playing games of that second variety, I see the case for leaving everything to interpretation. but, even there, you have a range - a scatterplot rather than a boxplot, really - where some things work sometimes and things fail more because of how they're used than their innate value.

(christ, I'm being needlessly vague myself, aren't I?)

what I'm saying is: genesis noir does a better job of convincing me it has an actual interpretation, and gives me more clues as to how it should be interpreted, than dear esther, but I like it less. virginia does as good a job as genesis noir in convincing me it has an actual interpretation, while giving far fewer clues as to how it should be interpreted, but I a) still think I get it more than I get genesis noir and b) like it better than either game.

phoenix springs is in this mold. it's nearest point of comparison would be genesis noir. I think I like it a bit better than genesis noir (which I do like, but find hard to love). I'm broadly onboard with its vagueness - I'm pretty sure I know roughly what's going on and think it can only affect its audience by not spelling it out. no spoilers (can you spoil a game when you have no proof your spoilers are correct?) but the ending of vanilla sky sucks; imagine if it just cut noah taylor's scene.

phoenix springs, I think, earns it. but, ok, its abstract, aloof, circular, unclear gameplay is justified... is it good? is it worth the theorizing? are the metaphorical mechanics interesting? are the themes it's getting at meaningful?

enh.

it's not vapid. it's not pretentious, in the literal sense of "using the techniques of deep works to imply a depth that is not there"; maybe in this colloquial sense of "for fuck's sake, I get it, you went to grad school." I find myself nominally curious, upon completion, to read fan theories, puzzle over what's going on, stress test my interpretation, dig into what resonances it might have... and I'm fairly positive I won't do any of that because I don't think it will enrich my understanding of the game. I think tucking into a rabbit warren of plot might be interesting, but I suspect all the thematic richness has already been coaxed out of the burrow. (with... aromatic vegetables? what was that metaphor, ian?)

will say, I think there's a massive failure of presentation here. this thing is called, in multiple places, a "neo-noir," and I'm both a noir buff and an adventure game head, so I'm the target, here. presents a core mechanic of collecting concepts: you play a reporter, you are investigating the whereabouts of your long-lost brother, the gameplay is catching individual phrases, names, locations, and conceptually comparing them against each other to draw conclusions. a few times, this made issues for me, because, as an adventure game head, I'm often doing this conceptual comparison internally, only to realize I can't progress because I needed the character to connect the same concepts. I've figured out leo's address, but iris hasn't! time to go back to all the hotspots that got me there and link the right nouns.

but, as a deduction mechanic, it's pretty cool, and lets you feel like a sleuth of a specifically journalistic flavor. that all the dialogue is one voice actress, speaking in very terse, clipped sentences, summarizing conversations rather than having them play out in real time, genuinely gives you the sense of perusing a reporter's field notes. the audio compression on the voice, and its low volume compared to the music and ambience, amplify the sense that you're listening to this on one of those little "note to self:" tape players you see in the movies. there's also some incidental, futuristic worldbuilding.

it just abandons all this 1/3 of the way through and becomes just a completely different type of game. and it's, again, a defensible type of game that builds on what was established in the first 1/3, but heaven help you if you would've liked a whole neo-noir journalistic near-future sleuthing game. cuz that's done. it's abstraction time now, baybee.

I dunno, the puzzles in that first third were the ones I had trouble with, so maybe the devs are better suited to abstraction. but I dunno that the audience you entice by selling a neo-noir mystery game is the audience that is gonna roll with the shift. weirdos like me - noir buffs who are also adventure fans and also have art degrees - are not the norm.

so... despite my rambling, I have not convinced myself this is great. my rating may change. I, once again, wish for half-star ratings, cuz this is a 2.5 for sure. I'ma call it 3 to be nice.