Figment is the latest venture from Bedtime Digital Games that first caught my eye back in March. In case you missed that, know that it's a beautiful isometric puzzle-driven musical adventure game that's set inside the animated confines of the human mind. It may also be the prettiest game I've seen this year, and it's now got a launch date: September 22.
Like the developer's previous games Back to Bed and Chronology, Figment flaunts a surrealist, cartoon-like aesthetic despite its somewhat sensitive subject matter. "This comes down to drawing from our strengths," Bedtime's Niels Sørensen tells me. "These games deal with surreal subject matters and being able to draw and express things in less realistic ways is a good way to get more sensitive ideas across.
"It's easier to bend things in a weird way without it getting too weird. You can push things way further without it getting out of hand, without it feeling out of place."
Some of that is shown off in Figment's launch trailer:
Sørensen tells me that the personal themes explored by Figment reflect his and his team's personal experiences, and that when dealing with themes wider in scope, they're nevertheless relatable on a personal level.
Of course, Figment's whimsical world prevents it from ever becoming too serious. Sørensen starred in the game's Plague character video earlier this year, and despite the fact each of the game's bosses represents a specific surmountable fear, doing so involves treating the baddies to "some of their own medicine".
With humour in mind, I ask Sørensen why Bedtime decided to make Figment a musical.
"Designing the game as a musical was something we wanted to try from the beginning," he says. "We wanted to try something different. For me, I really hate musicals, so I thought it'd be cool to try and do one. We had this initial idea of how everything should look, and we asked ourselves how we could add something that's surreal and sounds good, while complimenting the art style."
Sørensen adds: "First and foremost, though, it was mostly about fun: how can we make this more fun and weird. Making people sing to you? That's pretty fun. From there, the idea kind of took life and it was like, okay, if the characters can sing, then so should the world.
"Everything is tied up to the music and the whole game becomes this one big dance."
Fancy any of that? Figment is due September 22.
