When I visitedWASDlast week,Phoenix Springstop of my list of titles to check out. As an avid point-and-click fan, I had to explore Phoenix Springs’ striking, graphic novel-style visual design. Set in a neo-noir world, players take on the role of Iris as she tracks down her brother, explores the desert oasis of Phoenix Springs, and unravels a web of mystery.
Calligram Studios’ Florian Tanant tells me his wife does all the illustration and animation for the game, and that finding this style took a lot of iteration. The team didn’t want it to just look like computer graphics, “It was really trying as many different styles as possible and trying to marry the 3D with the 2D hand drawn stuff,” he says.
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Tanant relying on his wife’s art is emblematic of the approach the game has taken. A friend of his does sound design, and so they sent him the pitch and ideas, and straight away, he was on the same wavelength for what would work in Phoenix Springs. Likewise, Tanant contacted a voice actor and singer he knew for the voice of Iris and asked if she wanted to try it, and she nailed it straight away. Everything just fell perfectly into place.
“The thing we were looking for with the voice was a rhythm, a pace for the game. It’s really a noir, gumshoe staccato, and very rhythmic,” Tanant says. The combination of impressive visuals and soundtrack and an emphasis on full voice acting that fits the theme delivers a cinematic quality, which isn’t that surprising considering how Phoenix Springs was first envisioned.
“It started as a script,” He says. “It was a standard 90-minute film script. I was taking meetings in London and trying to pitch it, and people were like, ‘Oh, that’s great, but what else have you got?’ And I was like, ‘No, no, I want to make this’. That’s not how it works, though. Then I thought there are loads of puzzles in there, and it feels like problem-solving could work well as a game.”
Tanant had never dabbled in games before, though working on Phoenix Springs has given the team plenty of practice, and they’re pleased with how well the narrative works in this medium, “Not only does [Phoenix Springs] make sense as a game, all the puzzles make sense.”
Point-and-clicks have gone through ups and downs over the years, ebbing in and out of popularity, but this was never a concern for Tanant, “I grew up with point-and-clicks, and I think what they had going for them was the story. It’s not a game with a story attached. The story is the game.” Though Phoenix Springs might seem like just another mystery detective game, Tanant promises that’s only the surface level and that the game “gets weird”.
One of the unique things about Phoenix Springs is that, unlike classic point-and-click games, you’re not collecting and hoarding items in an inventory, trying to mash them together to find a solution. Instead, you have a collection of thoughts in your mind that you can pair together, which feels a lot more natural and how you would solve problems in your daily life. You know the problem in your head. You speak to others and try to learn more to solve that problem.
For example, when you’re trying to find out which school your brother went to and the neighbour remembers the name had three letters. You have the clue you need in your mind. When you find the pencils with the letters on, you don’tneedto possess the pencil. You have the answer as a thought. You go back to the neighbour and confirm it without waving a pencil in his face.
Phoenix Springs doesn’t handhold players. You have to figure things out for yourself. Tanant tells me that it’s interesting watching people play Phoenix Springs at WASD and similar events, watching how they engage with how the game works, and it also lets him gauge their frustration levels. He tells me the same demo has taken some people five minutes to complete, whereas others take two hours.
Phoenix Springs feels like an exciting mix of old school point-and-click and modern problem-solving and style, and I can’t wait to play the full game. It doesn’t yet have a set launch date, but it can bewishlisted on Steam here.
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