Contact Point

Contact Point is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Cheng Guang Youxi for Windows, released on August 9, 2019. It features a first-person perspective with fixed or flip-screen visuals and employs a point-and-select interface for interaction, typical of adventure games focusing on exploration and puzzle-solving. Based on the provided sources, the game’s specific narrative premise and detailed setting are not described, but it aligns with classic graphic adventure mechanics.

Contact Point: A Historical Artifact of Obscurity and Erroneous Identity

Introduction: The Ghost in the Machine

In the vast, digitized archives of video game history, certain titles exist not as celebrated classics or notorious failures, but as faint echoes—entries with catalog numbers but no cultural footprint. Contact Point (Moby ID: 210996) is one such phantom. Released on August 9, 2019, for Windows by the obscure Chinese studio Cheng Guang Youxi, this game occupies a peculiar liminal space. It is a title that is simultaneously present—with store pages, a MobyGames entry, and a Steam listing—and yet profoundly absent, with zero critic reviews, a nonexistent player discourse, and a digital footprint that consists of a few paragraphs of translated marketing copy. To review Contact Point is not to analyze a game’s mechanics, narrative, or impact, but to perform an act of archaeological deduction on a site that has yielded almost no artifacts. The thesis of this review is therefore twofold: first, to establish with certainty what Contact Point actually is based on the trace evidence available, and second, to interrogate why a game can vanish so completely, using its own obscurity as a lens into the vast, uncataloged chaff of the modern digital games marketplace. It is a study in absence, a case where the most significant fact is the total silence that surrounds it.

Development History & Context: A Blip in the Crowdfunding Boom

The development context of Contact Point is almost entirely inferred, as the provided source material contains zero dedicated information about its creation. We know only the developer and publisher, “Cheng Guang Youxi” (承光游戏), and its release date. There is no record of a crowdfunding campaign, press coverage, developer interviews, or design documents. This stands in stark contrast to the other major source provided: Phoenix Point.

The Phoenix Point Wikipedia entry and associated materials paint a picture of a high-profile, creator-driven revival in 2019. Spearheaded by Julian Gollop, the original architect of X-COM, Phoenix Point was a meticulously documented project. It launched a successful Fig crowdfunding campaign in 2017, raising $765,948, secured a lucrative Epic Games Store exclusivity deal reportedly worth $2.25 million, and was built by a team of veterans with a clear lineage to 1990s strategy gaming. Its development was covered for years by major outlets like Polygon, PC Gamer, and Rock Paper Shotgun.

Contact Point, by complete contrast, appears as if beamed in from an alternate reality where the indie boom and crowdfunding revolution never happened. There is no evidence of ambition beyond its immediate release. Its sole identifying feature on MobyGames is its listing of “Unity” as the game engine—a ubiquitous tool that signifies nothing about scale or quality. It was released on Steam for $3.99, a price point that suggests a primary goal of minimal viable product rather than cultural impact. The technological constraints are irrelevant; the game operates within the vast, low-barrier landscape of 2019 independent game production where a small team (or even a single developer) can self-publish a completed product with minimal fanfare. The “gaming landscape” at its release was dominated by discussions of next-gen consoles, live-service models, and high-profile revivals like Phoenix Point and Resident Evil 2 Remake. Contact Point was not part of that conversation; it was a quiet, untranslated drop in a vast ocean of content, made by a studio with no prior or subsequent public presence.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: Digging Through the Dictionary

The narrative of Contact Point can only be reconstructed from its Steam store description, which is itself a translation from Simplified Chinese. It presents a historically-set spy thriller:

“In the ‘isolated island’ Shanghai under the Japanese puppet rule, you will play Qin Zheng, the leader of the armed group of the Underground Party. After losing contact with the base area, the armed group will fight in Shanghai alone under the leadership of ‘you’. When you set a trap to lead the enemy to death step by step, another more secret and dangerous trap leads you to a more desperate situation. Can you survive in a difficult choice? Practise deception? Waiting for the final Jedi counterattack? Everything is in your hands.”

From this, we can extract a basic narrative framework:
* Setting: Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), specifically under the puppet Wang Jingwei regime, referred to colloquially as the “isolated island” period (1941-1945) after the Pearl Harbor attack, when the foreign concessions were occupied.
* Protagonist: Qin Zheng, a leader of a communist “Underground Party” armed cell.
* Inciting Incident: Loss of contact with the main base area, isolating the cell.
* Core Conflict: A two-layered trap. The protagonist sets a physical trap for the enemy (Japanese/puppet forces), but is simultaneously ensnared by a deeper, more secretive conspiracy. This suggests narrative complexity and potential betrayal.
* Themes: Survival, deception,绝望 (desperation), and a “Jedi counterattack”—a translation artifact implying a last-stand, against-all-odds climax. The phrasing “practise deception” points to gameplay mechanics involving stealth, misinformation, and perhaps dialogue choices.
* Structure: The description emphasizes player agency (“Everything is in your hands”) and “multi-branch plot,” indicating a branching narrative structure where choices lead to different outcomes, a common feature in Chinese visual novels and adventure games.

The thematic depth is impossible to gauge. Unlike Phoenix Point, whose lore was meticulously built through dozens of free short stories exploring its factions and world history, Contact Point offers no supplementary material. There are no wikis, no forum discussions dissecting its lore, no author notes. The narrative is a black box, advertised as complex but offering no external evidence of that complexity. The historical setting of occupied Shanghai is a potent one, rife with potential for themes of collaboration, resistance, and moral ambiguity, but without access to the game’s text or dialogue, we cannot assess if it engages with this history meaningfully or uses it merely as a atmospheric backdrop for a generic spy plot.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: Inference from Genre Tags

MobyGames categorizes Contact Point with the following attributes:
* Genre: Adventure
* Perspective: 1st-person
* Visual: Fixed / flip-screen
* Gameplay: Graphic adventure
* Interface: Point and select

This set of descriptors is remarkably archaic for a 2019 release. “Fixed/flip-screen” and “point-and-select” immediately evoke the 1990s adventure genre (e.g., Myst, King’s Quest) or, more relevantly, the “hidden object” and “puzzle adventure” games popular in the casual and mobile markets. The Steam description provides crucial, albeit vague, mechanical clues:

• “Fighting System: Fighting secret agents and killing ghosts, so that you can experience the march of the battlefield behind the enemy.” This suggests turn-based or active-time combat encounters, possibly with a stealth component (“behind the enemy”). The inclusion of “ghosts” is intriguing—is it supernatural horror, or a metaphor for enemy spies?
• “Intelligence Talent”: Implies a resource or skill system. “Gathering intelligence” may be a core mechanic, possibly through dialogue, exploration, or interrogations.
• “Multi-branch plot”: Confirms the narrative branching implied in the ad blurbs.
• “Operating tips: long press left mouse button can fast forward”: A strong indicator of a game heavy on text and static scenes, where “fast-forward” skips dialogue or animations. This is a hallmark of visual novels and certain point-and-click adventures.
• “Buy-in hint: ‘Money’ can buy acquired weapons and equipment repeatedly in the mall”: Points to a simplistic economic system, likely a shop between missions where currency (“Money”) is used to purchase or upgrade gear.

Synthesizing this, Contact Point most likely plays as a first-person, point-and-click adventure with narrative branches, inventory-based puzzles, and scripted combat/stealth sequences. The “fixed/flip-screen” suggests pre-rendered backgrounds (like Myst) or possibly a series of static 2D images that change as the player moves—a very resource-light approach to 3D environments. The “graphic adventure” label typically means an emphasis on story and puzzles over action. There is no mention of stats, skill trees, or complex systems. The “Intelligence Talent” may be a single meter or a few binary choices rather than a deep RPG system. The presence of a “mall” for repeated purchases suggests a linear progression through missions with resupply points, not a complex strategic layer.

There is no evidence of innovation. The systems described are boilerplate for the casual adventure genre. The potential flaw is extreme simplicity, but without playing the game, this is conjecture. The greatest systemic mystery is the “ghosts”—are they a mechanic (supernatural enemies) or merely figurative language? The provided sources offer no clarity.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Unseen Landscape

Here, the evidence vanishes completely. The MobyGames page has zero screenshots. The Steam store page likely has them, but the provided source material does not include them. There are no “Promos,” no “Media,” no “Covers” uploaded to MobyGames. The game’s visual direction is therefore a total unknown. From genre conventions, one might guess photorealistic or stylized static images of 1940s Shanghai streets, interiors, and perhaps abstract “combat” screens. But authenticity is questionable; the budget and origin suggest possible use of generic stock assets or very basic 3D modeling.

The atmosphere is entirely constructed from the text description: “isolated island” Shanghai, “march of the battlefield behind the enemy.” It implies a tense, claustrophobic, and paranoid atmosphere of urban guerrilla warfare. The potential for a compelling setting is immense—the layered colonial architecture, the constant threat of betrayal, the fog of war in a occupied city. But again, this is extrapolation, not analysis.

Sound design is not mentioned anywhere. The only comparable audio information in the entire source set is the critique of Phoenix Point‘s soundtrack as having “no fanfare whatsoever” (The Guardian). For Contact Point, we have nothing. Presumably, it features a minimal, likely synthesized, musical score and basic sound effects for interactions and combat.

The contribution to overall experience cannot be assessed. In the absence of any sensory data, we must conclude that these elements, if present, were not memorable or notable enough to be documented by any community or critic. The game’s world exists only as a textual premise.

Reception & Legacy: The Sound of One Hand Clapping

The critical and commercial reception of Contact Point is a perfect void.
* Aggregate Scores: Metacritic has a page for “Contact Point” (https://www.metacritic.com/game/contact-point/details/), but the provided link and scraping result show it redirects to Phoenix Point’s details. This is a critical error in the data pipeline. There is no Metacritic score for Contact Point. The MobyGames “Moby Score” is listed as “n/a.”
* Critic Reviews: The MobyGames review section explicitly states: “Be the first to add a critic review for this title!” There are none.
* Player Reviews: Equally nonexistent: “Be the first to review this game!”
* Commercial Performance: Unknown. Its $3.99 Steam price and complete obscurity suggest very poor sales, likely in the low hundreds if not dozens of copies. It has achieved no “Most Wanted” or “Wanted” status on MobyGames, indicating no community demand for its documentation.
* Legacy & Influence: None. There is no evidence it was played by any notable figure, inspired any other developer, or entered any discourse about game design, historical representation, or narrative. It did not generate mods, fan art, or forum debates. It is a dead end.

This complete erasure is its most defining feature. While Phoenix Point sparked debates about “authenticity” vs. “accuracy” in strategy games, alien mutation systems, and faction diplomacy, Contact Point did not even register as a datum. It failed to penetrate the English-speaking gaming press entirely. Its legacy is solely as a data point on MobyGames with an ID number, a testament to the sheer volume of culturally inert software produced every year.

Conclusion: A Review of Nothing

To write an “exceptionally detailed, in-depth” review of Contact Point is an exercise in describing a shadow. Based on the exhaustive, contradictory, and often misattributed source material provided, we can only construct a profile of a game defined by its absence.

What it is: A 2019 Unity-based, first-person point-and-click adventure set in WWII-era Shanghai, featuring a branching narrative about communist underground fighters, inventory puzzles, and likely simplistic turn-based combat against “secret agents and ghosts.” It was self-published on Steam for $3.99 by the unknown studio Cheng Guang Youxi.

What it is not: It is not Phoenix Point. The majority of the provided sources—a full Wikipedia article, multiple forum threads, academic papers—are for an entirely different, much more significant game. This confusion is the most salient point of this review. The fact that these sources were provided for Contact Point suggests a fundamental error in the research query, but one that ironically serves our thesis: in the vast database of games, entries are easily conflated, and truly obscure titles are indistinguishable from placeholders.

Final Verdict: Contact Point is a non-entity. It holds no place in video game history because it never entered the historical record. It represents the asymptotic limit of obscurity—a product released into the global marketplace with zero marketing, zero critical engagement, and zero community formation. Its “place” is as a cautionary example: a game can be technically complete, available for purchase, and yet be entirely absent from the cultural and critical conversation. It is the digital equivalent of a book printed and left unbought in a warehouse. In the taxonomy of gaming, it is not a cult classic, a flawed gem, or a notorious failure. It is a null result. The only meaningful analysis of Contact Point is that its total silence speaks volumes about the overwhelming scale of the contemporary games industry, where the signal of a Phoenix Point is drowned out not by noise, but by the infinite, quiet hum of thousands of Contact Points.