Phogs! review – Phantastic stuff

Sliding about on a bedrock of blancmange, moving past boulder-sized strawberry slices and mountains of pink-tipped whipped cream, I pinball myself off chunks of milk chocolate straight into a gooey, molten vat of the stuff. The strange but friendly creatures lounging at the sides appraise me silently, unconcerned that I didn’t get the memo that it was Giant Fruit-Shaped Hat Day – I am shamelessly sporting a snorkel and a nightcap – and sigh contently. I’m a little envious as they slip a little further into their delicious hot tub.

Phogs! reviewDeveloper: Coatsink, Bit Loom GamesPublisher: CoatsinkPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out today on PS4/PS5, Switch, PC, and Xbox One

I spend the next ten minutes or so doing a whole lot of nothing much. Phogs! – a sweet, if peculiar, puzzler that stars an elasticated, two-headed dog (now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write) – doesn’t intervene. Like my hot tub companions, its calm and unhurried, content just to wait for me to noodle about and work it out on my own. I know pulling the (marshmallow) cork free from the (chocolate) cauldron up above must have done but… ah! Wait! I didn’t know I could grab onto this fountain!

Phogs! is full of those “ah!” moments. Mostly it’s exclaimed in delight, incited by the whimsy of it’s sweet, dreamy environments and sharp puzzling, and sometimes it’s uttered through clenched teeth like a curse word. This, my friends, is a physics game, where you can solve a puzzle properly, bumble your way through and cheese it, or end up sacking it off entirely because you’ve wedged yourself between a jammy dodger water wheel and a giant Victoria Sandwich cliff-face.

I spent a lot of time being caught on things, actually. Your two-headed monster dog – which looks like two front parts of a car welded together by a cold-hearted second-hand car salesman – not only has an extra head, but they’re missing their legs entirely, too, which wouldn’t be so bad if their conjoined stomach hadn’t been greased up like Clark Griswold’s sled. This makes precision movement pretty much impossible, and while it’s is astonishingly forgiving when it comes to mistakes – an untimely plunge off the side sees you respawn, without penalty, pretty much where you were – that doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating, particularly as a lot of errors are forced by tight angles and an uncooperative camera.