Phonopolis: A Beautiful World of Constructivism and Cardboard 📦

10 years in the making, Amanita Design’s latest gem Phonopolis launched during the week! A game constructed entirely from cardboard, it’s a phenomenal artistic achievement.

It also tells a clever, funny dystopian story alongside the indie dev’s familiar mix of abstract puzzle solving. Oh, plus a new game from this studio means a new soundtrack from composer Floex. Lots to be happy about here!

Puzzles and Punishment in Phonopolis

Okay, this is out now but currently only on Epic Games, GOG, and Steam (as in, it’s PC only).

In classic Amanita style, this is a point and click adventure game with plenty of abstract/logic puzzles. Players take control of Felix who is a young binman in the city of Phonopolis. As the studio explains in a press release:

“In contrast to the majority of Amanita Design’s previous efforts, tackles more relatable, real-world themes and topics, focusing on manipulation and individualism, but still keeping the overall experience playful and light-hearted. Players will take on the role of Felix, a thoughtful young man who, along with his fellow citizens, faces the imminent threat of falling under the control of the dystopian city’s authoritarian Leader once and for all, effectively losing their humanity.”

By accident, Felix discovers his society is under threat and there’s a subversive underground movement to maintain personal autonomy. Pertinent themes then! Oh, yes.

As Felix goes on to highlight the inherent nature of totalitarian systems. The initial promised ideal of a perfect, pure society, inevitably followed by absurdity and dysfunction.

This is all expressed in an avant-garde style artistic extravaganza. A vibrant 3D world of cardboard, pieced meticulously together through cut-outs, painting, and digitisation. The goal was to make Phonopolis a hand-crafted world and Amanita has achieved that in empathic fashion.

Cardboard Constructivism

The art styles used are angle heavy (kind of like Wassily Kandinsky styled abstractions) and falls under:

• Constructivism
• Futurism
• Suprematism

Constructivism is the most apparent (for us, anyway) and you can see the style stamped all over the main marketing branding for the game.

Just compare it to this 1919 Bolshevik lithographic piece Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (Клином красным бей белых!, Klinom krasnym bey belykh!) by Russian artist El Lissitzky.

If you buy the soundtrack on Steam, you get a free artbook. Lissitzky is referenced directly with one of his quotes:

“The task of the artist is to construct a new order of life.”

Then we see plenty of Amanita angles, so reminiscent of Soviet-era sharpness and attempted order.

Again, every single thing in the game was constructed with cardboard. In traditional point and click fashion you guide Felix around areas, resolve issues, and move the story along. This thing really needs to be seen in motion, it’s an incredible artistic achievement.

Due to the extensive effort of piecing the game together, there’s only about 2-to-3 hours of gameplay here. That may bother some gamers, but it didn’t with us. We appreciate the achievement and wanted to play it all over again.

Phonopolis is clever, funny, and so weirdly captivating.

Absurd humour is a big part of the experience. The little intricacies of the the (often slapstick, other times satirical) jokes can be missed easily. So, pay attention, citizen! 

But given the nature of Professional Moron here and our lampooning of social structures and capitalism (you might have noticed we’re not a fan of the latter), Phonopolis delivers the absurdity in delightful spades of visual gags.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cardboard. 

Something we see a lot of anyway as our cat, Susan, has an obsession with the stuff. Good to see it all in game form. It’s similar to Petums’ beautiful game Papetura (2021), which was made of paper and took the indie developer six years to put together. It also features a fantastic Floex soundtrack.

On that note!!! Here we have another magnificent Floex soundtrack in Phonopolis. It’s over an hour of new music from the Czech composer and it delivers his trademark catchy hooks and folktronica excellence.

Amanita Design has done it again here, crafting a mini-masterpiece that’s quite the artistic achievement. Anyone who still sneers at video games and thinks they’re “for kids” needs to play something like this, as there’s no denying its artistic brilliance.

Hey ho, the abstract nature of the puzzle solving won’t be for everyone

Yet if you’ve not played an Amanita game before, now is the time to put aside that grievous error and embrace the world of Phonopolis.

The Production of Phonopolis

The day before the game released, Amanita Design launched a full documentary on YouTube about the game’s lengthy production cycle. If you’re interested in game design, it’s well worth a watch.

It’s not in English, but you can turn the subtitles on (CC) for insights.

The studio’s last full title was the surreal horror romp Happy Game back in 2021. The concept for Phonopolis was actually by another studio (apparently called Hammeware, who we can find no information about online).

Jakub Dvorský (founder of Amanita Design) saw the game and quickly moved to get it in his development. The team began work on it in 2016, but didn’t announce it until May 2022.

Since then, fans have simply had to wait, wait, and wait some more. It’s been well worth it, though, as this is arguably the best thing the indie dev has ever done. It’s not to be missed.

Phonopolis Soundtrack Offers More Floex Brilliance 🎼

There’s a new Amanita Design game in town! That means a new Floex soundtrack with Phonopolis. The game launched on 20th May and there’s 60 minutes of new musical excellence to experience.

Whilst offering all the familiar looping, neoclassical, electronic familiar Floex-ness, it also has a unique soundscape that has a heavy emphasis on sound effects, drawing players into the experience unlike previous Amanita games. It’s a wonderful score and offers something for everyone.

The Clever Soundscapes of Phonopolis

Amanita Design has very kindly put the whole score up for free on its official YouTube channel. We’ve timestamped our favourite of the lot above, that’s the track called Anton (but feel free to swoop through the whole score, that’s it above right there).

Anton is the eighth composition, but there are 17 in total.

And whilst his previous work (such as the incredible Samorost 3 soundtrack) offers more unusual, cosmic themes of experimentation, we’d say the Phonopolis score is one of his more accessible works.

The genre is sometimes called folktronica. As in, mixing traditional instruments with synthesisers and ambient sound design.

But… that characteristic Floex (Tomáš Dvořák is his real name) style is always there. Like with the beautiful Composer’s Apartment below, that signature blend of electronic production alongside acoustic instrumentation.

He merges tension and natural musicality, always there with that adventurous and nervous spirit.

Amanita Design teased us all pre-release with one of the tracks. Railway Electro is a classic Floex composition, that looping electronic ambience in action. He has this capacity, like all great composers, to make pieces that feel instantly familiar.

If this was an album from the ’70s, you’d bet this would be “the single” studios would hope for a top 10 hit kind of deal.

The work is a collaborative effort, too, as Amanita noted in its press release:

“The music for Phonopolis is being written and produced by Amanita’s long-term collaborator Tomáš Dvořák aka Floex (Machinarium, Samorost, Pilgrims) with sound effects provided by audio engineer and foley artist Matouš Godík (Samorost 3, Creaks). Until now, Amanita Design has been known for including no comprehensible language in their games. That changes with Phonopolis, as its story will be told in a narrative voice.”

That’s correct, as the game features narration for the first time in the Amanita universe. An English guy called Joe Acheson. Very nice, lending a soothing tone to complement the soundtrack. Acheson is a composer in his own right, he works as a solo artist as Hidden Orchestra and he composed the soundtrack to Amanita Design’s puzzle platformer Creaks (2018).

So, yes, Floex doesn’t always do the scores for Amanita’s games.

But he usually does and his style is so distinctive. Every moment in Phonopolis has been meticulously crafted to offer something unique. Heck, even the main menu theme is a melodic little number we’ll happily have drifting in the background whilst we work.

Amanita Design and Floex remain a match made in ambient heaven. These abstract, curious, intriguing games have been brought to immersive life through his music over the last decade. Long may this continue.

Right now, listening to #Floex – Mecholup

https://innerfx.bandcamp.com/track/mecholup

FLOEX - Lovemaking Inside of the Water Camel

https://peertube.automat.click/w/1hVXZDfcm3qqYxMQe1cJWQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzrq6J_ZacI

#music #Floex #Machinarium #soundtrack #YouTube #video