Phoenix Springs Review (DRMaddock)
Played start to finish in a bit over three hours. The writing is excellent, the art style is awesome, the puzzle mechanic is wonderful, and it all those excellent pieces get mixed together into mud. There's just something about the way that the game world is designed that makes it feel like sorting through a needle stack to find a piece of hay. Take, for example, an early scene at the University. There are something like nine screens you can travel through and hundreds of items to click on. Each clicked item lets you "Talk to", "Look at", or "Use", leading to hundreds of possible interactions. Beyond that, you can use any idea you have unlocked with any item, leading to a feeling of endless interactability. Yet, there is almost always (seemingly) a single solution to every puzzle, so most of the time the interactions feel like they lead you nowhere, and get increasingly frustrating as the game goes on. This puzzle system works extremely well in the confined areas of the start of the game, but near the mid point, when you suddenly have access to dozens of locations, this feels more like a pixel hunt than an adventure game.
All that said, I probably still would have left the game with a generally positive outlook (I found the ending to be extremely powerful), except for the puzzles in the titular location. Without spoiling anything (although keeping an eye towards saving you some frustration), there is a puzzle that seems to broadcast that you are solving it in the wrong manner but requires you to do the same series of interactions *four* times in a row. These interactions involve a multi-minute walk across the map (click out of frustration, I did learn here that you can double click to run), to do the same thing four times. This was probably 15% of my total play time and completely soured me on the experience.
There's definitely a lot to like about Phoenix Springs, especially if you are a fan of arthouse cinema, but the frustrating puzzle designs, especially in the latter half of the game, really take the wind out of the sails.