Overview
This is a great easy to medium difficulty sci-fi puzzle game, worth buying and replaying once completed. The beautiful scenery is one of its best features, complemented by lovely music that creates a great background ambience. I really enjoyed the contrasting moods evoked by different locations and terrains within the world. The outcome of exploring places was not always predictable, sometimes resulting in pleasant surprises. The storytelling is fantastic, characterised by a gentle humour, and I particularly enjoyed the ecological drive to the narrative. The main characters, Ion and Ani, are sweet and likeable, which encourages players to become emotionally invested in their survival and personal development. Good save functions provide the option to be highly selective in storing multiple stages of progress and returning to certain scenarios to experiment (or you can just sit back and rely on the autosaves).

Gameplay
There are a few things to be aware of before playing. Phoning Home is advertised as an open world game, but it didn't feel truly open world to me at any point. There are many limits to your exploration of the landscape, which was initially frustrating. Ion and Ani's trajectory is linear in that there tends to be only one right way to progress and solve puzzles. That said, once I accepted this, I enjoyed the game a lot. Another small complaint I have is that there wasn't as much scope for skills development in either character as I would have liked. On my first playthrough it felt as if items weren't quite as available as they needed to be, and it seemed as if items became available only as and when they were needed to enable the next stage of the story, which will be a little disappointing to fans of item collection. By the time I figured out what I needed to keep Ani from rusting beyond repair it was too late. It seemed a lost opportunity that there was no side quest or alternative way of finding gear to restore Ani to full health.

A Good Buy
Despite these minor criticisms, I would definitely recommend buying this game if you're after an original story set in a beautiful world with engaging characters. It offers a mellow experience that is low on combat and doesn't have many jump moments. Also, you don't have to be a fan of puzzle games to enjoy Phoning Home, since I would say the landscape and characters are the most prominent features. I've probably played the game for at least 30 hours and found the ending very satisfying. I mostly play offline, and several of my achievements haven't been registered; I'm not sure if this is an issue with the game or Steam.

[b] Overview [/b] This is a great easy to medium difficulty sci-fi puzzle game, worth buying and replaying once completed. The beautiful scenery is one of its best features, complemented by lovely music that creates a great background ambience. I really enjoyed the contrasting moods evoked by different locations and terrains within the world. The outcome of exploring places was not always predictable, sometimes resulting in pleasant surprises. The storytelling is fantastic, characterised by a gentle humour, and I particularly enjoyed the ecological drive to the narrative. The main characters, Ion and Ani, are sweet and likeable, which encourages players to become emotionally invested in their survival and personal development. Good save functions provide the option to be highly selective in storing multiple stages of progress and returning to certain scenarios to experiment (or you can just sit back and rely on the autosaves). [b] Gameplay [/b] There are a few things to be aware of before playing. Phoning Home is advertised as an open world game, but it didn't feel truly open world to me at any point. There are many limits to your exploration of the landscape, which was initially frustrating. Ion and Ani's trajectory is linear in that there tends to be only one right way to progress and solve puzzles. That said, once I accepted this, I enjoyed the game a lot. Another small complaint I have is that there wasn't as much scope for skills development in either character as I would have liked. On my first playthrough it felt as if items weren't quite as available as they needed to be, and it seemed as if items became available only as and when they were needed to enable the next stage of the story, which will be a little disappointing to fans of item collection. By the time I figured out what I needed to keep Ani from rusting beyond repair it was too late. It seemed a lost opportunity that there was no side quest or alternative way of finding gear to restore Ani to full health. [b] A Good Buy [/b] Despite these minor criticisms, I would definitely recommend buying this game if you're after an original story set in a beautiful world with engaging characters. It offers a mellow experience that is low on combat and doesn't have many jump moments. Also, you don't have to be a fan of puzzle games to enjoy Phoning Home, since I would say the landscape and characters are the most prominent features. I've probably played the game for at least 30 hours and found the ending very satisfying. I mostly play offline, and several of my achievements haven't been registered; I'm not sure if this is an issue with the game or Steam.