PHONOPOLIS

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

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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