Written by Jonathan Lee, February 26, 2017, 6:00 p.m. Tweet to: @Writerscube
I love robots. Watch them in shows. Assemble and paint miniature figurines of war mechs. And of course, I play video games that involve robots a whole lot. So when the wonderful folks at ION LANDS sent me a review copy of PHONING HOME—suffice to say, I was pretty excited! The whole cast is a bunch of robots!
And then when I saw what our brave robo-protagonists ION and ANI looked like? I instantly fell in love with the characters. With ION unable to speak, his mannerisms and subtle expressions in the beginning scene were what endeared me to him. It reminded me a bit of the fictional character Wall-E. ANI, when you run across her, makes up for ION’s silence with her humorous, whimsical chatter.
So What’s in the Game?
PHONING HOME is a survival adventure game that requires a lot of exploration, a dash of problem solving, and resource e management. After crash landing on a planet that you were supposed to just survey for a planet-mining exploitation fleet, the robot ION and his sentient AI ship TR-2 (who’s actually ION’s boss, more or less) have to figure out how to phone home and get that mining fleet to scrub the world clean of its resources, thus fulfilling their purpose.
Easy, right?
Well, it’s not that simple.
You need to collect resources. And you’re going to keep at it for some time. A lot of it is to maintain ION’s body. Some of those resources will go to building parts to help your ship. Some of those parts will be to enhance ION. You’ve got a lot on your mechanical hands and there’s only you to do it. But while you’re out searching for the next batch of metals or gases, ION stumbles upon ANI and her AI ship Sister.
From there, the game becomes something else depending on who you ask. Some might say the game becomes a giant escort mission because you have to lug ANI all over the place while you continue on your mission to repair TR-2 as well as Sister. And you have to fight off swarms of glowing nano-machines, rock creatures, and a giant pterodactyl with a penchant for anything orange. To me, it’s much more than that!
The Details (Spoilers Ahead)
For some background, basically Humanity has completely given up their fleshy bodies to become onboard AI’s and robots. But Sister and ANI are mechanicals that belong to a particular group known as Oxies. Basically, they’re the robots that believe that organic life ought to be something celebrated and not shunned.
Throughout your adventure with ANI, you come to learn more about how robots like ANI appreciate life, nature, and even just oxygen (ANI tries to think about what it’s like to have lungs, at one point). Normally, robot-kind has come to shun things like rain and oxygen because it makes things rust. While most robots just want to live forever, the Oxies remind robot-kind that a part of living comes from knowing that you’re not going to always be around. This is further shown by ANI and Sister’s conversational tones and moments of contemplation, while on the other side of the aisle is TR-2 being more concerned about maintaining proper labels and sucking the life out of the planet by the exploitation fleet.
Speaking of Sucking the Life Out of the Planet…
The planet is ALIVE! That’s right, it’s a giant mineral organism. Made of the stuff that the mining fleet’s looking for. And with that realization, do you also realize that bringing the exploitation fleet to this world will surely mean killing this organism. I quite enjoyed this bit of story because it was quite unexpected.
So the ending leaves you with a choice: Do you leave the world with ANI and Sister, leaving TR-2 behind? Or do you fix TR-2 up, phone home, contact the fleet, and await the miners—dooming the planet to a slow and painful death?
Fear not. I chose to fly away with ANI and Sister, leaving TR-2 to listen to music along with an estranged alien that had crash landed a long while ago.
Gameplay
PHONING HOME itself plays fairly simply. You move around, instead of jumping you can boost yourself with an upgradeable jet booster. You pick up resources as you find them. And you can fire a pulse laser to ward off some of the dangers that roam the world. So nothing too complicated, you can focus more on taking in the world around you. And pay attention to the characters when they’re talking or interacting with one another.
You also get access to some other gadgets! There are a bunch of ways to solve the different problems you’re going to run into. From teleporters, light traps, and a kinetic lifter for parts where ANI needs help getting around! In order to escape giant bird-pterodactyl-creature thing, for example, I had to ward it off with a pulse laser, create a linking portal from a skyscraper to the ground, AND utilize an anti-grav cushioning device to save ANI and ION from becoming bird food. It was crazy, it was cool and the solutions are never anything overly obtuse.
You’ll find yourself using your different gadgets and upgrades in order to traverse different environments as well as getting through some tight situations. I never once felt like I was frantically juggling these options.
Graphics
The graphics for the game are pretty fair. I only noticed one instance of texture glitching while inside TR-2 (after restarting the game, it did not occur again). My absolute favorite thing to look at was the trees! You had lava, snow, freezing oceans, oh my! But the trees and glowing mega-fungi in the forest areas were the prettiest to look at.
Final Thoughts
PHONING HOME was a fun adventure game with a likeable cast of characters. But I think its best quality is how it is an exercise of empathy and hope. You see it in the things ANI tells ION. You feel it in when you’re dragging ANI into shelter to protect her from a sandstorm. Checking your resources to make sure you can repair yourself and ANI before your next encounter with giant sandworms, or chasing after a giant pterodactyl for kidnapping ANI. And finally, that decision you make at the end—to seed hope for life in both what Humanity has become (robots) and this living planetoid that you’ve been wandering on, or to allow the fleets to destroy all that.
I left the game feeling quite satisfied with how the message was executed, and maybe I’m just being a big fan of movies like Wall-E and Short Circuit, but I absolutely adored ION and ANI.
There were some bugs, from falling through the game world floor upon loading a game, to that strange graphics glitch. But throughout the time that I was playing this game—ION LANDS was releasing patch after patch, addressing these issues as well as improving the game UI. It was cool playing the game and getting to witness the diligence exercised by ION LANDS in their response to player feedback. So rather than take off anything for those bugs, I’d like to tip my hat to a game studio that cares for its game and its players!
Currently, the Steam reviews for this game stand at Mixed. But don’t let that deter you, folks. As I was saying, the bugs I encountered have been getting fixed on a weekly basis, and by the time I was on the last quarter of the game, I ran into no problems. Much has been done to improve the game.
With all that said… Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to give this game a Buy! At the current price tag of $19.99 on Steam, I would say it’s worth it if you’re looking for a neat little survival adventure game with a bit of that adorable robot aesthetic and a dash of humor.
