Phoenix Springs: A philosophical journey with clicks of a mouse
John Gray makes a bracing assertion in his book «Straw Dogs»: «Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world. Once a technology enters human life-whether it be fire, the wheel, the automobile, radio, television or the internet-it changes it in ways we can never fully understand.»
It's an observation brought to mind by the new point-and-click computer game Phoenix Springs, an eye-catching, thought-provoking exploration of the unintended consequences that follow a society-wide embrace of biohacking.
Players fall into the role of Iris, a veteran reporter, as she sits on a train with a desert looming through a window. The opening seconds, and an arresting dissolve from the sun-flooded train to a shadowy apartment, sets the tone for what follows-a slippery exploration of memory, time and space grounded in Iris' quest to uncover the mystery of what happened to her brother.
Phoenix Springs, by Calligram Studio, offers a refreshing take on the point-and-click genre whose heyday was the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of amassing items that need to be deployed throughout the game, Iris collects information-names, ideas, phrases-which she must apply to her surroundings to try to make sense of them.
The game's writer and designer, Jigme Ozer, said he tried to avoid «the key before door problem» baked into too many point-and-click games-where the player picks up an object lying around an environment and then looks for where it can be used. That's not how it works in real life,
