Figment (PC)
Figment is a game that takes place inside the mind, and as such, a lot of imagination was put into representing imagination. A world made of thoughts, dreams, and ideas plays host to this action puzzler, the game embracing the surreal and realizing it with vivid artistry.
Figment is perhaps first and foremost a feast for you senses, filled with areas that work wonderfully as lovely desktop wallpapers and music that practically infects the world as even the water dripping from a house’s eave will match the rhythm of the background track. The adventure through the mind comes up with many interesting ways to manifest a world that turns the inside of the brain into a fantastical game world, the biggest one being how it lays out its areas. There are two major areas you’ll be exploring to solve puzzles and fight monsters in Figment, and they represent the two halves of the human mind. The right side’s supposed predilection for creativity and artistic expression means when the game’s hero Dusty steps into this new area, he finds a place flush with all sorts of expressive designs and manifestations of creativity. Buildings and flora that feel straight out of Dr. Seuss dot this half of the mind, and instruments seem to sprout from the ground like plants and will join in the background music when you’re close enough. This is certainly Figment’s most splendid area when it comes to visuals and a distinct identity for the title, and it’s little surprise that the game wants to show it off after only a brief starting area that teaches you the ropes and stakes on the way to a city where emotions live between the two brain halves.
A bridge made out of a caterpillar laying on its back, staircases made out of floating pencils, people living in large teapots, and teeth falling like rocks that still match the rhythm of the music certainly make the game’s leanings towards creativity its highlights, but the left side of the brain still has some interesting concepts in trying to represent the supposedly analytical and logical half of the mind. Clockwork and gears are given a heavy focus, machines play a big part in puzzles in the area, and you’re constantly interacting with a robot on rails during this portion to try and solve its more involved and interconnected puzzle segments. It certainly won’t impress with the visual variety as much as the other half of the brain did, but it does feel distinct from the other gameplay areas and its different segments still explore different ideas like running across actual clock faces rather than always just playing with the cogs and gears.
Figment’s story is all about a disruption to the normal functions of this particular mind, the game beginning with only the sounds of a family drive ending in a crash. Entering the mind of the father who was driving, we see that a nightmare has come to life inside his head, the trauma of the experience manifesting as the Fear of Loss. Corrupting his thoughts and causing trouble wherever its influence can reach, the Fear of Loss threatens to make the mind give up entirely, but there is one person the citizens of the brain believe can help prevent such a fate, and old hero who fought many such fears in the past. Dusty is a strange little cat man who seems to be a mix between a curious stuffed animal the brain’s owner had as a kid and a possible imaginary friend, but adulthood lead to Dusty’s usefulness drying up. When the bird Piper comes to request his aid in saving the mind, she finds Dusty bitter and grumpy from being tossed aside. It’s only when the Fear of Loss impacts Dusty directly does he agree to help. Piper’s persistent pep balances out Dusty’s demeanor during the adventure and leads to the essentially inevitable softening of his character, but while the game has plenty of inviting visuals and a lot of the humor leans on some fairly good puns about the characters’ current situations, the language Dusty uses seems to suggest the developers were angling for an older audience or at least kids who don’t mind some outright swearing.
Another interesting touch when it comes to the game’s artistic design comes in the form of characters actually singing at different points in the game. While the mayor in the middle of the mind speaks in rhyme, most of the songs are actually sung by your enemies, the Fear of Loss helping the fears of disease and spiders manifest as foes for reasons that don’t really seem to tie to the emotional narrative of helping a mind cope with the shock of a car crash that jeopardized his family. Still, having all three of the fears sing to you as you enter the areas of the mind they’re infecting and during their boss battle certainly gives them more character and makes the battles much more interesting then their sometimes simple designs would suggest on the surface. The plague nightmare is a constantly coughing creature who spews poison and the arachnophobia nightmare is naturally a big spider who relies on laying down webs, but Fear of Loss’s more abstract concept leads to him utilizing waves of dread and having a generically menacing design. What’s stranger is the Fear of Loss’s rock star voice and stylings, his music certainly having a morbid tone to it despite the heavy instrumentation, but like most characters in the game save Dusty and Piper, his speaking voice isn’t the best when it’s not used for singing lyrics. The disease nightmare probably has the best excuse for his unusual voice since it is supposed to sound scratchy and somewhat obnoxious, but the spider fear goes for a French accent that doesn’t gel well with the English being spoken while many side characters like the emotions hiding behind their doors in the city sound phoned in rather than professionally done.
The bad voice acting crops up pretty routinely throughout and the spider’s song actually feels rather weak since she doesn’t have the energy of disease’s number or Loss’s hard rock approach, but the music of Figment is still surprisingly textured and malleable and the choice to add in songs with lyrics certainly proves to be a good one. The fighting featured throughout Figment though is a bit barebones and this is likely by design. While enemies will crop up like little spiders and small plague weasels, the substance of fighting these irregularly appearing foes is often just avoiding their attack and striking until you need to repeat the process. Sometimes the fights are just disguised puzzles like needing to use the poisonous sneezes of the diseased creatures to clear away plants blocking your path and the bosses are all about setting things up so you can actually leave them vulnerable to your sword, so it doesn’t feel like this part of the game is necessarily damaging since the challenge itself isn’t coming from the back and forth battle but rather finding the right way to exploit opportunities.
The puzzles are the meat and potatoes of the gameplay experience, and the different segments of the mind keep coming up with new ways to test your puzzle-solving. There are some challenges that are purely about avoiding injury like timing movement through areas with teeth falling and sharp clock hands turning, and sometimes the game leans too hard into dangerous environments like in the late game where outrunning waves of dreads can lead to repeated deaths due to tight movement windows, but most of the environment is there to play into puzzles. Rotating windmills with dragonfly wings for blades are used to push poison around in the creative side of the mind and over in the logical half you’ll power up and play a steam-powered pipe organ in line with the stones that serve almost as sheet music. Some puzzle designs are fairly standard ideas like needing to push and pull blocks around to make bridges or navigate a tight space, but then the game might whip out an unexpected twist. For example, a series of panels where you need to light them all up by stepping on them doesn’t reset the puzzle if you retread on one and turn it off, and soon managing the ones you’ve turned off effectively is part of the solution.
A lot of the game does involve simple state altering concepts like carrying colored bulbs between activation points, alternating which platforms are up or down, and taking pieces from one lift to make another available. Many are more interesting in concept than execution admittedly, playing instruments for a tree with an ear is more likely to be solved with the game’s hints than actually figuring out the pitch-focused puzzle, but they give the game a good interactive side amidst the focus on artistic expression. Being a bit more clever with your inventory items and noticing quirks in the environment can help you find lost memories as well to learn a bit more about the man whose brain you’re inhabiting, but some of these involve backtracking in a game that makes it a bit tedious to do. It can be easy to accidentally lose a vital item needed to reach the optional areas as well, but admittedly the memories aren’t that interesting to begin with so missing out on them doesn’t hurt much and you’ll get all of the important story details just by playing through the adventure regularly.
THE VERDICT: Figment’s imagination is the main star of this action puzzler, the manifestation of the mind’s abstract concepts appropriately surreal and creative. The creative half of the mind is particularly delightful with its setpieces, colors, and the best use of the dynamically changing music, but the logical half of the mind has its own beauty as do the central portions of the brain. Having the boss fears sing is a nice touch even if their performances and general voice acting leaves something to be desired, but Figment’s illustrations definitely make up for it. The gameplay side of Figment does have some good ideas in its puzzles even if there’s not quite as much experimentation or imagination there, but it definitely does a better job of supporting the adventure than the basic enemy battles. Thankfully though, those puzzles do have enough to them to make Figment more than a pretty face with pretty music.
And so, I give Figment for PC…
A GOOD rating. Figment’s artistry will always be its crowning achievement, and even before I knew what the game was about, the memorable images of its mindscapes stuck with me. The music moving in time with the game world and evolving as you approach the instruments that make up the environment continue to delight as the visuals explore the concepts a mind could contain in rather imaginative ways, but then we come to other elements like the uneven voice acting and the action. The battle system feels like it needed to either commit more to just being a way of interacting with puzzles or have some more substance to the portions devoted to just batting about baddies, but it at least never feels like it actively hurts the experience since simplicity is hardly that huge a crime. The puzzles are left to carry the experience and it does its job well enough that you won’t be bugged by the moments it might lean too much into dodging danger, and while some puzzle concepts are old hat or not that engaging, Figment can bring enough ideas to the table that it never dwells on its weakest designs for too long. Figment still mostly keeps you interested in interacting with its world rather than just looking at it, but adding in puzzles that made creative use of mental concepts could do more for making Figment feel more cohesive.
Figment pleases the senses and occupies your mind well with its sounds, sights, and situations, the player utilizing their logic to get through the world as they appreciate the creative set dressing. You can see a few points where the developer wasn’t quite as creative during the buffet of artistic expression, but as the heroes dish out puns, the villains sing as part of their fights, and the puzzles you interact with turn the surreal environments into tools, it’s hard not to be delighted by Figment’s imagination.