Phoenix Springs review: a surreal detective mystery that's both old-school and new wave
Playing Phoenix Springs feels like David Lynch spliced together the ripped pages of a pulpy sci-fi comic with the storyboards of a broody noir. Its visuals are stark and foreboding, its dialogue delivered in riddles, and its haunting choral music sounds like it's been recorded in a wind tunnel. It’s a point-and-click that calls back to early 90’s Lucas Arts adventure games, and while it shares the same frustrations, the presentation makes it feel entirely contemporary. What begins as a standard detective game - chatting to strangers, rummaging through junk, finding addresses found on the net - soon spirals into something else entirely. I’ve finished it twice and I’m still not sure I totally understand what it all means.