Phobos: A Galaxy Jones Story is the sixth game by Phil Riley, and the second one in the Galaxy Jones series. He’s the author of Bureau of Strange Happenings, a game I didn’t make it that far into, and he came out with Crash, the same competition that I released Into The Sun. I didn’t play the first Galaxy Jones game, but I had a fun time with this one.

The game starts off with the standard: the world is about to end, and you need to save it. But this time, the world is Mars. Robots from Sirius have redirected Phobos to crash into Mars. Once you get to their base, you’ll find it’s cleared out. You have to piece together what went on by reading notes and scanning logs.

The game is not written in the standard IF format. There is no second person, and the rooms don’t have the standard titling. The layout is small and easy to get around without a map, but the rooms do feel similar without the titling. The rooms are fairly empty too, and I kept trying to look at things that weren’t there when I was lost. It also uses some strange ASCII characters to create its own language. At one point, you have to look at it very closely to figure out how to advance in the game. It’s a neat idea, but I don’t think this would work on a screen reader.

The game also requires you to use non-standard verbs. So you will need to examine all your items to figure out how they work. If you get caught up in the game and forget about these verbs, you’ll get stuck as I did. Don’t forget these tools in order to beat the game.

The game does have a clever device: the Galaxy Suit. You can turn it on to break down doors, getting past some of the puzzles. You don’t get any points, but it does let you advance through the game. I went through four doors like this. My score suffered, but I like that I had this choice to get around some of the puzzles.

Phobos does a lot of things right. It’s a quick space adventure, and if you don’t get stuck like I did, you should be able to get through it within an hour. At the heart of this game, you are alone in a deserted station, trying to figure out what happened. A classic IF trope. Phil took that idea and ran with it, coming up with a fun space adventure.