Phoenix Springs reimagines the point-and-click adventure as weird noir

In Phoenix Springs, it’s not so much the ravishing hand-drawn visuals that first grab the attention, but the voice of narrator and protagonist Iris. Befitting her name, she behaves like a roving eye, investigating and describing her surroundings with a clinical, almost robotic detachment. Yet Iris is no blank slate: you quickly come to learn that she is a snob with little regard for the homeless. She even appears to have short shrift for the player, delivering a withering putdown when you make a connection she deems just a little too obvious.

Iris, a tech journalist by trade, is the perfect protagonist for a point-and-click adventure, a genre whose mechanics often begin with the simple act of looking. Eventually, in classics like Grim…

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