Amanita Design teases the Orwell-inspired Phonopolis with a surprisingly funny demo about messing with people, running from the cops, and fighting fascism even when you don't really want to

Amanita Design is one of my long-standing favorites. It was the studio's 2009 robot adventure Machinarium that hooked me, but Botanicula, the Samorost games, the madcap Chuchel—they're all brilliantly creative works. So when I saw that a demo for its next game, Phonopolis, had dropped into the Steam Next Fest, I was all over it.

Phonopolis is a point-and-click adventure that tells the tale of Felix, a garbage collector living in a city ruled by an authoritarian 'Leader' who controls the populace with messages blared through omnipresent loudspeakers. Felix one day discovers a headset that enables him to blot out the noise and break free of the Leader's influence; he quickly comes to recognize the threat it presents, and thus sets out—somewhat reluctantly—to thwart the Leader's ambitions before the arrival of the Absolute Tone, which will strip every citizen of their minds, freedom, and humanity forever.

If that all sounds a bit on the nose, well, yeah, but Amanita makes no bones about it: The studio says Phonopolis is "loosely inspired by the works of Karel Čapek and George Orwell" and "explores themes of social manipulation and individualism," and it may not be subtle but in this era of social media meltdown and rising authoritarianism in the US and beyond, it sure feels timely.

But "the overall experience is playful and lighthearted," the Steam page states, and it really is. The most prominent puzzle in the demo involves using a broken smokestack, bad plumbing, and a building's unexpectedly malleable architecture to convince a sunbather and the landlord to have sex so you can sneak into a meeting with three of the city's foremost dissidents. That's an admittedly vague description (no spoilers here) but it is also 100% true.

The Phonopolis demo has all the hallmarks of an Amanita Design game: A strong, distinct visual style, really good music (the soundtrack comes from Amanita stalwart Tomáš Dvořák, aka Floex, who previously provided music for games including Machinarium, Samorost 3, and Creaks), and a hapless, not-happy-to-be-here hero who's just doin' his best in a bad situation.

There is also, despite the obvious comedy—and again, like most Amanita games—a subtle darkness lying underneath it all. My meeting with the dissidents was interrupted by a pair of regime thugs, who chuckled grimly as they destroyed a room filled with art and treasures from the time before the Leader's ascendance. It was slapstick, but I felt a gentle sense of sadness throughout, watching these artifacts from a better era be smashed to pieces by thick-headed goons who wield the power of the state as a weapon to claim payback for all the ways they've come up short in life.

Is that feeling amplified by the state of the world in which I live, where events like that happen every day except, you know, for real? No doubt. I wouldn't say Phonopolis is a direct commentary on the current state of things: It was announced in 2022, before things really went to shit, although that sense of a society in chaos is at least somewhat a matter of visibility and perception and some of us are merely experiencing the world now as others have been forced to deal with it for generations. But anyway, it is interesting how a game inspired by works like 1984 lines up so well with the world we've built and continue to build, isn't it?

I admit, that's a lot of weight to put on a 30-minute demo of a point-and-clicker that plays for laughs and is genuinely fun. And Phonopolis is fun: One of the things I like most about Amanita games is that they're built to encourage exploration without inflicting punishment for failure, and that's the case in Phonopolis: You'll be chased by regime enforcers in the demo, for instance, but they can't actually catch you, so you can play around with different things to see what they do while your not-too-bright pursuers do a sort of low-level Keystone Cops routine in the background.

There's only so much I can say based on impressions from a short demo, but Phonopolis looks set to be a classic Amanita Design adventure that benefits (insofar as you're inclined to describe it that way) from more overtly reflecting the world around it than any of the studio's previous releases. I think that's important—not every game has to say something, even if some of them should—but for those who don't, it's also not a necessary part of the equation: Strip away the politics and the Phonopolis demo is still clever, funny, and visually arresting. I say with confidence that if you like Amanita Design games, you're going to like this one—and if you're not familiar with the studio's work, it's a great opportunity to change that. You can play the demo now on Steam.