Phoenix Springs is a lesson in using negative space, both visually and narratively

Nothing you’re about to read about Phoenix Springs — the new point-and-click mystery game from Calligram Studio — is the full truth. It’s the truth to me, for now. But really, it’s all up to interpretation, and this is how I’ve chosen to represent that interpretation to you, the reader. I can’t even tell you definitively whether Phoenix Springs, the oasis in the middle of the desert, is real — or if it’s a manifestation of someone’s consciousness, or if it’s the afterlife, or if it’s where you go when you get turned into a biomechanical being.

Cast in blackened shadows and narrated by the deadpan, almost robotic main character, the game is a surrealist fever dream that constantly puts reality and order into question. To describe it as simply as I can, it’s a video game in which you play as Iris, a reporter on a quest to find her missing brother. The world is a postmodern, post-capitalist wasteland, seemingly forced into dilapidation after riots and protests concerning “bio-ethics.” In the first half of the game, you’re tied to this relatively tangible plot with detritus that makes sense in relation to our world and in the world of the game: books that explain bio-ethics, photographs of people, houses with doorbells, characters that provide hints and clues. But soon, you’ll travel to Phoenix Springs, and that’s around when things start to feel like Murakami.

Even if Phoenix Springs’ plot were devoid of meaning — which it’s absolutely not — the game would have my attention with its artwork. Blank space fills most of the screen in many shots, with stark colorful and abstract shapes to carve out a comprehensible world to walk around in. Iris is illustrated in a purplish white, distinct from the non-player characters she comes across. The screen is covered in a grainy, static-like filter that serves as a reminder that nothing in this game is entirely clear.

But its visuals only serve to underline the game’s confident, impressive use of negative space in both the way the game looks and the way it plays. You might spend 10 minutes stuck on one puzzle, or you might figure it out instantly and leave lots to be discovered — but you won’t miss out on anything you don’t catch, because you won’t even know it’s there. In my first playthrough, I only got 23 out of 87 Steam achievements, for instance. That’s because I likely (unknowingly) left hundreds of stones unturned — things I’ll go back time and again to try to find. And, like any good surrealist work, the game leaves the player constantly questioning the integrity of each and every element, including Iris herself.

The game isn’t trippy for the sake of being trippy — it’s trippy because it’s pointing to an uncomfortable reality: We don’t actually understand 99% of what’s going on at any given time. Moreover, to try to understand reality is to warp it in that reproduction. You can describe an apple all you want, but your description of an apple will never be an apple. It’s a modernist tenet I’m personally obsessed with, and one that a few NPCs in the game state outright (or, at least, that’s what I think they’re stating).

Phoenix Springs is playable art, and I could see it fitting beautifully into a museum exhibit, especially because you could really start the game at any given point and still find it fulfilling. But unlike many other art-forward games, this one has a compelling narrative that kept me coming back each day until I reached an ending — just one version of the ending, of which I’m certain there are many. It excels at iterating on the point-and-click mystery genre, and it’s designed for ultimate replayability.

In fact, the very last decision you can make is to click “rebirth” at the end of the game, which puts you right back at the title card, where you can begin another playthrough. By that point, the illustration of Iris has changed color, resembling the other NPCs — one last prompt to consider whether Iris is different from the others, or if you’ve just lived a snippet of her fever dream, or if you’ve unknowingly turned her into a vegetative cyborg by helping her solve the mystery, or if she’s been a cyborg all along.

Does she even have a real brother? Did she make all this up? Did I make all this up? The only way to find out — and, in doing so, raise 1 million more questions — is to keep playing Phoenix Springs.

Phoenix Springs was released on Oct. 7 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Calligram Studio. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.