Czech studio Amanita Design are the masters of whimsical point-and-click puzzle games. The team’s roster speaks for itself, my personal favourites Machinarium, Botanicula, and Creaks burst with charm, and I wouldn’t dream of not mentioning the iconic space gnome adventure Samorost and its equally wonderful sequels Samorost 2 and Samorost 3. Amanita Design effortlessly pleases players with its hand-crafted worlds and lightweight puzzles, and it looks like the studio’s upcoming puzzle game Phonopolis is no different.
In Phonopolis you play as Felix, one worker of hundreds in a cardboard city ruled by a totalitarian power. Audio commands control everyone in the city through loudspeakers, and Felix is one of many programmed to obey the speaker’s every command. That is until he accidentally falls through a hole and tumbles underneath the city where he finds a pair of headphones. Now able to block out the oppressive voice of the city’s reigning force, he decides he must try and stop the authoritarian leader’s commands, and free the city from its mindless servitude.
Puzzles in Phonopolis look in the same playful vein as other Amanita games, which see you pointing and clicking on objects in the environment to make things happen and find fun surprises. But what makes this game different to its predecessors is how its puzzles are presented. Instead of clicking on the environment, you’ll be instead poking and prodding wonderfully hand-crafted contraptions.
In the same way that you would grapple with the intricate puzzle boxes in The Room series or KO_OP’s GNOG, Phonoplolis has its own intricate puzzle machines where you'll need to press buttons, pull levers, turn gears, and other wonderfully tactile interactions. In the game world, these objects are presented as part of the city - clockwork cars, gearbox buildings, mechanical parade floats and more.
In one section of the trailer, the player needs to help Felix escape from a barred prison van by messing with the wires and switches in the vehicle's mechanical guts. In another scene, you can push buttons to physically shuffle through the walls of an appartment like clicking through a retro viewfinder, the room’s inhabitants glued to their TV screen, too preoccupied to notice.
Amanita Design is known for its meticulously detailed worlds, and as its roster of games has grown, it's like the team is making its way through different textiles and materials. Samorost’s world takes inspiration from organic plant life, Machinarium’s world is cold and metallic, Creaks’ is a wooden wonderland, and now we have Phonopolis cardboard city. The game’s Steam page says, “...every piece of any building, every character, and every frame of any smoke or flame is hand-painted on a piece of paper, then digitized for use in the game’s 3D world” - which is honestly bonkers and speaks to the studio's commitment to its craft.
The game is endlessly playful with these textiles too. I'll always remember playing Creaks and noticing the groans of a wooden floor being used in the game's soundtrack. In Phonopolis, for example, you can tear and peel at the environment like it was made from actual cardboard. Not only do these elements contribute to a wonderfully tactile world at your fingertips, but these interactions keep things tongue-in-cheek. The game’s main topic matter may be about social control, but these fun interactions and playful puzzles keep the game light-hearted in tone.
I love Phonopolis' hand-crafted ‘mechanical-style’ cardboard puzzles. It almost makes me wish these were actual physical objects I could hold in my hands. I've also felt this with the glossy puzzle boxes from the previously mentioned The Room series or the intricate machines in The House of Da Vinci. Phonopolis’ cardboard creations are fun to solve, but also effortlessly charming. Amanita Design has created puzzles that aren't just meant to be solved, but objects in themselves to be admired.
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