Calligram Studio’s Phoenix Springs is a point-and-click adventure game with a slight mechanical twist. Rather than have you scrounge your way through an inventory filled with physical clues and tools, the game presents you with something more like a mental map filled with various ideas. These ideas can represent people, places, or sometimes just concepts that you can connect to objects or people in the world—or just bring them up in conversation—in order to solve the mystery of what happened to your brother, Leo Dormer.

The story of the game starts out as a relatively simple noir-inspired mystery. Playing as reporter Iris Dormer, you’ll track down leads and interview subjects as you hop from your apartment to Leo’s former residence to an abandoned university. The game’s world is tantalizingly mysterious—certainly sci-fi, most likely governed by an authoritarian state—and it’s filled with...