Phoning Home is an authentic work of author. After its development, we find the effort and passion of Marko Diekmann, veteran German programmer. In his curriculum, he highlights the participation in two MMO’s, mobile games and recently his work in the last title of the independent German developer Yager, specifically in the aerial combat simulator Dreadnought.
After thinking about the concept in his head, Marko begins the development of Phoning Home in his spare time. Once he got a solid material, he
published a prototype of the title on the help platform for publishing programs at Valve’s online distribution store, Steam Greenlight. Phoning Home quickly caught the attention of the community, and in just two weeks received
the green light from Valve for the title to be published on Steam. Aware of the need for help to launch a product as polished as possible, Marko founds Ion Lands,
name in honor of the peculiar robot protagonist of the adventure that concerns us, and hires part-time experts from the industry with experience in names of both weight as LA Noire, The Settlers or Incubation. After a slightly longer conception of what was initially planned,
Phoning Home offers an exploration and survival experience on an unknown and hostile planet. To get ahead in the inhospitable world where our protagonist’s ship has crashed, we must collect and combine a wide variety of raw materials to obtain various
resources and improve the intrepid robot that we control. We will have a wide variety of mechanics to get ahead, from the creation of teleportation portals to stealth skills.
Unfortunately, these mechanics are not fully implemented and are quite crude and unsatisfactory. The plot does not have much to offer, and ends up being a mere excuse for
the long walks that we have to give in order to end the adventure. Regrettably, Phoning Home seems to be more concerned with keeping us
occupied and with putting obstacles before offering us an entertaining and profound experience. His proposal ends up falling into tedium and repetition, and its excessively slow development coupled with unsatisfying gameplay ends up being too heavy a slab.
The inspiration in it celluloid marks the adventure
The history of Phoning Home starts with the ship of our protagonist making an emergency landing on an unknown planet, fruit of which is severely
damaged. This ship has only two crew members. The artificial intelligence of the same, which will be our guide throughout the adventure, and the beloved Ion to whom we will manage, a curious robot that inevitably reminds
us of the protagonist of Wall-E, and for those who already have an age, we also will bring to mind Johnny 5 de Cortocircuito, although changing
his motor system for a small levitator element. Following the indications of the artificial intelligence of our ship, we take our first steps on the
unknown planet where we have landed forcefully, with a very clear objective, which gives title to the game.
This civilization, as it is said shortly after beginning the odyssey, has freed itself from the yoke of the greatest of the tyrants, the same life, for
which it is composed entirely of synthetic beings. After the first failed attempts to establish communication with our planet of origin, we ended up running into another starry ship, whose artificial intelligence urges us to look for its lost
robotic companion, which responds to the name of Ani. Once we have found it, a peculiar relationship between it and our protagonist will be
established. The loquacious, witty and sensitive at the same time irascible Ani is the perfect contrast to the completely silent Ion, since this
does not have an oral communication module. The two robots and the two artificial intelligences form the nucleus of the adventure
