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.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2024 من Edge UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 2024 من Edge UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Children Of The Sun
René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).
Rise Of The Ronin
Falling in battle simply switches control to the next person up, and then quick revive fixes everything
THE MAKING 0F.... AMERICAN ARCADIA
How a contrast of perspectives added extra layers to a side-scrolling platform game
VOID SOLS
This abstract indie Soulslike has some bright ideas
Here be Dragons
What does Poland's key game dev conference have in store?
Absolute state of the union
What this year's GDC says about the present and future of video game development
DAMBUSTER STUDIOS
How the former Free Radical found the fun amid corporate crises
SILENCE IS GORDON
Why does the mute protagonist still loom large over the landscape of firstperson-viewed games?
FOREVER SKIES
Though its knightly get-ups remind us of the Arthurian tone of Dark Souls, and its gothic environments carry the miasma of Bloodborne’s Yharnam, it doesn’t take long for Hexworks’ Soulslike to spill beyond the mould in which it’s been set.
Final inning
The life and death of Blaseball, one of gaming's strangest experiments