Bedtime Digital discusses its surreal action puzzler, Figment: Journey into the Mind
A Dali-esque peak into the human mind
Surreal puzzle and action game, Figment: Journey into the Mind, launched last November for iOS after enjoying successful runs on Steam and Switch.
It's a conceptual puzzle and action game that comes courtesy of Danish developer Bedtime Digital. It plunges you into a superbly imagined and expressionistic interpretation of the human mind, where you'll need to think outside the box to solve it's various conundrums.
Our very own App Army was full of extremely high praise for Figment, so we took the time to speak with Bedtime Digital's founder, Klaus Pedersen, to learn more about the game.
What do you think Figment offers that you can’t get from any other title on the App Store?To us, what stands out in Figment is the multi-layered narrative. Nothing is directly told to you. You slowly start uncovering what caused the nightmares to appear through dialogue between characters and these nightmares have their own theme songs reflecting their goal and root cause. It goes without saying we focused quite a bit on sound design as well as approaching serious themes in a light-hearted tone. Balancing that was a challenge we faced, however we’re extremely proud of the result.
What were your inspirations for making it?
Originally the game emerged from the idea of wanting to explore the world of our previous game Back to Bed (which is a more confined puzzle game) and visually share some of the same references such as Dali and Magritte as well as more contemporary surreal artist - most notably the children book artist Shaun Tan. The underlying themes of story are based on things we were going through in our own lives. We also drew inspiration from various Zelda games and puzzles games such as The Witness. The music is a more essential component than in back to bed and draws inspiration from folk and punk as well as the music of Tom Waits.
What were the biggest challenges you faced during development?A big (but fun) challenge was to make sure the story worked on both an immediate level as a fun adventure but at the same time worked on a deeper level and reflected upon themes such as depression, growing up and what courage means when you are an adult. In terms of production, making a 3D world come off as a 2D painting was also an interesting challenge.
Which aspects of Figment are you personally the most proud of?
We’re extremely proud of how such a personal game (to us) actually resonated with people around the world. We’ve received heartfelt messages since Figment came out. It’s a huge reason why we want to continue making games.
We didn’t feel like we went the full 100 yards in regards to Figment’s potential. We’re a relatively new studio. We’re currently making Figment: Creed Valley, a standalone encore to Figment. We’re striving to expand on the concepts we liked and bring more stories, more musical boss fights and of course more puns!
If you'd like to explore the imaginative world of Figment for yourself, you can find it to download right now on iOS, Steam, and Switch.
