"The Phoenix Project" is a game by my friend erin foster, who I really appreciate and have been wanting to experience them telling a story for som etime.
There is a great promise in erin's work. Every time a cutscene is on screen, it drew me into the world that was being presented. There is clearly so much thought put into the happenings of the story, the characters, the conflicts, the ideas at play - this is a very DENSE political work. And it serves best, I feel, as a narrative-based game, with gameplay yet to be expanded upon.
Even as some cutscenes do feel like sometimes a LOT at once, it is information that drew me IN to the world at play, immersing me into what is happening. I feel like there was a lot of thought put into the conflicts at play, and it's suspenseful when it needs to be.
And so the narrative is the part of the game that really shines here, despite me having a few issues with puzzle presentation and gameplay balancing - which are mostly because the developer ran out of time :) I know that behind the scenes, there was a lot of time crunch here, resulting in some systems that were less-than-finished. The cursor in the puzzles became obtrusive, the sliding puzzle felt like an RPG Maker sin being committed against me, perhaps even more than ice sliding puzzles and boulder pushing puzzles combined (XD) but I know that erin will gladly remove that puzzle from the game for me LOOOOOOL :P
I want to focus on the strengths - the story crafting draws you in, the atmosphere is thick, and the feeling is there. The conversations hold great weight, and I feel that it when it is at its best. I do feel as if the details of the larger narrative, particularly with the girl, did become a little confusing, but I can see they could become clear very soon so that my understanding can be tracked along with it.
All in all, thank you erin for providing a fantastic entry to this jam. I loved playing it and I hope to enjoy more fantastic erin content in future :)
(Here's me playing it)