Phonopolis Beginner's Guide

Phonopolis drops you into a cardboard city ruled by an all-controlling Leader whose voice blares from loudspeakers on every corner. You play as Felix, a garbage collector who stumbles underground, finds music, and starts quietly dismantling the whole system one paper mechanism at a time. Amanita Design built this as a point-and-click puzzle game where almost every screen hides a small chain reaction waiting to be triggered. The puzzles are clever, the visual jokes are everywhere, and the solutions are almost never where you first look.

How does Phonopolis actually play?

Phonopolis is a point-and-click adventure where you move Felix by right-clicking anywhere the cursor turns into a pair of walking legs. Interactable objects show a hand cursor on hover. You can click, drag, push, pull, rotate, and inspect things. The game rarely holds your hand, but it does leave visual breadcrumbs: small animations, sound cues, and before-and-after changes that signal you're on the right track.

The key habit to build early is scanning the full screen before touching anything. Check the foreground first, then the walls, then signs, wires, switches, and anything near the edges. Phonopolis loves hiding a functional lever inside what looks like a visual gag. That silly dial or paper flap might be the exact thing that starts the next chain.

What's the best way to approach stuck puzzles?

When a puzzle stops making sense, the worst move is randomly clicking everything. Reset your thinking instead. Start with the last thing that changed: did a light turn on, did a panel open, did a character move, did the background music shift? In Phonopolis, a small animation is the game telling you something just became relevant.

Here's a reliable unstuck sequence:

• Click or drag every object that recently moved or made a sound.
• Return to any character or machine that ignored you on a previous visit.
• If Felix is carrying an object, treat it as a clue pointing toward the next goal rather than a traditional inventory puzzle.
• Look for matching symbols, colors, or repeated shapes within the same scene.
• If nothing responds, exit the screen if the game allows it, then return and check what stayed changed.

For your first playthrough, approach hints in layers. Identify the room's goal first. Then figure out what the room is missing. Only then look for the exact click order. This keeps the funny little discoveries intact while still saving you from ten minutes of poking at cardboard bureaucracy.

Scene-by-scene walkthrough: Scenes 1 through 12

Scene 1: The waste yard

The opening cutscene establishes Phonopolis as a loudspeaker-saturated city where the Leader's commands are inescapable. Felix is introduced at the landfill, and every time you try to move him away from his post, the loudspeaker shouts him back to work. Keep pushing the waste crusher until it breaks through the ground and Felix falls underground.

Scene 2: Underground path

Click Felix to wake him up. The underground section is nearly dark, so stick to the barely visible path heading right. Clicking off the path causes Felix to stumble on garbage. At the far end, a portrait of a woman reveals a gramophone. Interact with the gramophone to start music playing and uncover the Old Opera House. Head inside.

Scene 3: The Old Opera House

This scene is a multi-step stage-clearing puzzle. The sequence:

1. Drag the curtain rope on the right all the way down to open the stage curtains.
2. Pull the same rope again to flip the background to a pyramid scene with four stage props.
3. Grab the fallen pedestal on the right and drag it off the stage to the right.
4. Use the rope on the top left to cycle through hanging objects until a sun with a ribbon appears. Pull the ribbon to drop it off the stage.
5. Slide the boulder on the right off the stage, then lift the wooden box and drop it from maximum height repeatedly until it breaks. Drag the remaining boulder off.
6. A push button will appear on the pyramid. Pull it off the stage to clear everything and reveal headphones. Felix picks these up.
7. To exit, cycle through the hanging objects until the whole rig collapses, tearing the background sticker. Tear it away to find a ladder out.

Scene 4: Back at the waste yard

The loudspeaker is still shouting, but the headphones fix that. Drag them from the top right corner of the screen onto Felix. With Felix now deaf to orders, click the loudspeaker to make your coworkers shovel waste into the crusher. Do this twice to fill it to capacity, then interact with the machine. The overloaded crusher breaks down. A police officer arrives, cannot get Felix to comply, and hauls him off for an earwash.

Scene 5: The tunnel vehicle

You're riding in a police vehicle through an endless tunnel. The goal is to destroy the vehicle from the inside. Start by tearing off the hanging wrap to expose the control panel.

Once the vehicle is destroyed, Felix escapes through the exit on the left.

Scene 6: Workers' Quarter

With the headphones on, the loudspeakers no longer control Felix. Walk all the way left and back to the center. An anonymous letter arrives directing Felix to a woman's apartment: the building with moving numbered floors and a large number 24 on top. Interact with it to enter.

Scene 7: The apartment building

Four switches appear. Drag them all to expose the building's staircase. Felix heads to the top floor but finds a ladder missing. It's at the bottom near the rightmost balcony railing. Head back down, but rowdy workers complicate things.

Six buttons control the building:

• Two base switches: water pipe and second-floor chimney exhaust.
• Three upper-floor buttons: slide floors left and right.
• One chimney button: rotates it 90 degrees.

The sequence to clear the path:

1. Drag the yellow floor right, bend the chimney upward, then release exhaust fumes with the right base button. Fumes enter the house on the yellow floor, a woman comes out in distress, a loudspeaker triggers, and the handyman guarding the ladder goes to investigate.
2. Grab the ladder and head back up.
3. When buttons reappear, drag the third floor right. The woman comes out for sun on the jutting second floor. Drag the floor back and she falls to the bottom, landing next to the handyman.
4. For the washerwoman on the second floor, drag the yellow floor right again and release water from the pipe with the left base button. She stays busy mopping. Felix reaches the top floor.

Apartment floor control buttons

Scene 8: Inside the apartment

Three men are hiding in the adjacent room. They turn out to be music composers, not the renegades the city's posters describe. After they reveal some uncomfortable truths, police knock on the door. The trio escapes through trap doors and Felix hides inside a piano.

While hidden, direct the officers to shoot everything in the room with their slingshot, saving the cuckoo clock for last. When the clock falls and the cops start smashing it, Felix slips out and exits through the open door on the left.

Scene 9: The fall and the dream

Felix tumbles off the building. Move him around the screen as he drifts through the air, bumping into a violin, a piano, a bird cage, and a statue in sequence. He lands on a planet. Rotate the planet anticlockwise until its center becomes the face of an opera-singing woman, then position Felix directly beneath her until the opera music starts.

Scene 10: Rooftop escape

The dream ends. Felix is on a rooftop with a parade below. A clothesline pulley has the letters T, O, N, and E on both cables. Remove the screws from the T first (Felix climbs onto the rope automatically). Then untie the N, remove the tape from the E, and roll the O back and forth until it drops off.

Walk Felix across the rope. As you near the other side, police crank the pulley to spin the rope. Grab the upper rope to use the momentum and swing to the other side. Alternate between the upper and lower rope each time the police reverse direction until Felix clears the gap and tumbles into an air duct.

Scene 11: Ventilation duct

Police have taken the elevator to Felix's floor and are actively searching. Wait for them to clear off, then follow the shaft into apartment 51.

Scene 12: Apartment 51 and the wall puzzle

A couple is inside: wife knitting, husband watching TV. A nine-button wall panel cycles wallpaper and objects on each tile. The goal is to cycle through four specific layouts, each unlocking a button in the corner.

With all four buttons active and a loudspeaker on the adjustable wall, use the buttons to send commands to the couple:

1. Press the blue button, interact with the loudspeaker. The man grabs a beer that spills, then places a second one on the TV.
2. Switch to bathroom background (upper red button), interact with the loudspeaker. The wife grabs the bottle, pours it into the toilet, and flushes it. She then steams her hair, but beer foam short-circuits the loudspeaker, flipping its tile to blue.
3. Press the loudspeaker again. Husband and wife swap roles.
4. Switch to kitchen background (lower red button), send a command. The husband juices carrots with the blender.
5. Return to blue background, trigger the loudspeaker. The wife grabs a beer.
6. Repeat the kitchen step one more time. The wife has had enough, yanks the TV cord, and the vent grille crashes down.

Felix climbs down and exits. The TV camera spots him and triggers an alarm, ending Part 1.

Nine-button wall tile puzzle

General tips that apply across all scenes

• Sound is feedback. An alarm or a music shift almost always means a switch configuration is correct. If you hear it, you're on the right path.
• Objects that moved once can matter again. After another machine activates nearby, revisit things you already clicked.
• Felix's inventory is minimal. If he picks something up, that item is almost certainly the key to the very next obstacle.
• Characters react to machine states. Getting an NPC to move usually requires changing the environment around them, not interacting with the NPC directly.
• Exits hide in plain sight. Tears in background stickers, open doors, and air ducts are all valid exits. If you're stuck in a scene, check the edges of the screen.

For more help with later scenes and optional achievements, the full Phonopolis guides collection covers everything from hidden interactions to all collectible completions.