PHONOPOLIS

Enter a corrugated dystopia, where everyone's card is marked

Amanita Design has, a cynic might say, made its game again. There is no denying that the Czech studio’s output tends to hew to a particular formula, each individual title distinguishing itself via tone and theme more than structure or systems. As (almost) always, there is a diminutive character onscreen and you, the player, are their omnipotent ally, directing them via a pointer, and otherwise prodding and pulling at various pieces of the environment as you trial-and-error your way to solving their current predicament.

Amanita Design has, then, made its game again. But it has also not, since Phonopolis is its first properly three-dimensional world. More significantly it’s the first in which its characters communicate in an intelligible language (unlike, say, the furious nonsense of Chuchel). For the most part, it’s one particular voice you’ll hear: the entertaining inner monologue of inquisitive protagonist Felix, who, after a work mishap, discovers a set of noise-cancelling headphones. These allow him to block out the regime’s orders – piped through loudspeakers installed across the land – which have turned most of the populace into mindless drones. With news that the so-called ‘absolute tone’ is set to brainwash the remainder, he becomes an unwitting revolutionary. Oh, yes, it’s the studio’s first political game, too.