Video game logic encourages us to expect treasure chests behind waterfalls, bosses to attack in predictable light or punishable heavy attack patterns, fire to be weak to water, etc. It’s the general set of unwritten rules that both determines and responds to player behavior that spreads across genres and time. It’s why players will automatically move to the right at the beginning of a side-scroller or pick up a pot and throw it to see what loot is inside, without any hesitation in front of the willing NPC whose home you’ve just invaded.
And some games just toss it all out the window.
That is a massive risk. Some games will revolutionize video game logic by ignoring it. Others will flounder and alienate players. At worst, folks may complain that a game is “unplayable” when that game lacks signposting or the player is boxed into a specific set of unlearned logic.
Phonopolis, from Czech studio Amanita Design, rejects traditional video game logic in its puzzle design. With over a dozen games under their belt, clearly there’s something working there. Instead, it employs something that feels much more akin to disentanglement puzzles.
Growing up, whenever I’d visit my grandparent’s house in rural America, at one point between the endless cookies and pies, my grandpa would walk over to his desk and grab his latest disentanglement puzzle. They’re what they sound like: undoing or unraveling a loose knot of wood blocks and strings to free a specific piece, usually a metallic ring. He had long figured out the solution, but he enjoyed watching us struggle to solve the problem.
Eventually, his weather-worn farmer’s hands would gently instruct us on some out-of-the-box thinking to slip the ring from the clutches of obstacles. I was always in awe of his “farmer’s logic,” a way of thinking that emphasizes minimal mechanical or physical solutions to optimize laborious tasks, untangling the puzzles in the fewest possible moves. This is the kind of thought process he, and others of his generation, put into rewiring houses or rebuilding pasture fences.
As Felix, an ordinary garbage collector who resides in the lowest strata of the titular Phonopolis city, you’ll confront a lengthy series of disentanglement puzzles. Each comes with its own objective and solution and will require a kind of farmer’s logic to crack. This is not video game logic. Some patterns and clues carry over between puzzles, though certainly not all. Puzzling is not scaffolded as you advance. Early on in the tutorial, the game will instruct you to be on the lookout for loose corners to pull, buttons to press, and sections to rotate. These will form the foundation of most, but not all, of the game. Many rules will drift in and out, like wayward cattle in a field.
I met these with mixed results and suspect that this will be the most divisive aspect of the game. Sometimes a puzzle’s layout will read clearly to me. Other times, I was counting how many moving parts there were and running back-of-the-envelope calculations to determine if I should try to brute-force a solution. For those looking for a challenge of bespoke bits and bobs to reconfigure for an a-ha moment, Phonopolis could very well be your game of the year. For others who want a game that more neatly follows general video game logic, well, you’ve got linear progression here, and that’s about it.
For audiophiles, Phonopolis makes good on its title. This is a city’s worth of refined noises and music. The soundtrack is nothing short of phenomenal, with musical compositions feeling whimsical yet boasting fine-tuned production. It’s crisp and clear with the ring and timbre of clinking glass and scraping stones. For a game with themes so heavily tied to music, it’s a high bar to cross, but Amanita Design soars well above it.
Audio design easily matches this caliber. Each step that Felix takes hits with the right weight and cadence of a slightly naïve but good-hearted everyman. Lightbulbs crashing, water gushing, paper ripping—all of the verbs of the game are accented beautifully with full, accompanying sound. I struggled to quantify the hours of labor to refine every detail.
Thankfully my curiosity was anticipated. In the main menu, the developers feature a short, wordless “Making of” documentary, and I was compelled after rolling credits to see a glimpse behind the curtain. Over twenty years of development expertise and fourteen shipped games saturated the craft that the team put into the audio experience.
In equal measure, the team put immense effort, creativity, and care into the cardboard dioramas that compose each city district and narrative theme of Phonopolis. Stacked like layers of a multi-tier cake, this world is structured by socioeconomic status and privilege. The town is painted with bold reds, greys, blacks, and yellows that emphasize the architectural and social stratification that Felix will worm his way through.
In the city of sound, the people are dominated by oppressive tones. Felix works mindlessly, zapped into working every few seconds with a blast from a megaphone. Soon he stumbles into an excavation pit and discovers the ruins of an opera house. Inside he finds over-the-ear headphones, conveniently noise-canceling, that serve as his defense against mind control.
Within minutes, Felix is already disrupting the totalitarian government. I got many laughs out of how he managed to make several machines explode and ravage the lower tiers of Phonopolis without major consequence. Thematically, the story here has been told many times before, but never in the timbre that is uniquely Felix’s.
This story is narrated by our dear friend Felix himself, and the voice acting is sublime. This is my frontrunner choice for voice acting work this year. Nearly one actor covers all roles, altering pitch and intonation for each major character. The game takes on a theatrical quality that fits the tone and cardboard well, making Phonopolis play out like a series of slapstick vignettes across several constructed stages, much like a Buster Keaton film.
With striking art and audio direction, indie lovers will find it nearly impossible to ignore Phonopolis. If puzzles deter you, however, it’s likely that early on you’ll have to decide how willing you are to substitute convention for innovation. In my four-hour playthrough of Phonopolis, I found it to be the right length, a fair middle ground for someone like me who doesn’t always act or think logically and can struggle with games like these.
