I Am Dead is a fun, charming game about being an interesting ghost

About two years ago, artist and designer Dick Hogg saw a GIF of a banana going through an MRI machine. Seeing the different layers of the fruit was hilarious. It inspired him. Not long after, Hogg called his partner-design partner, Ricky Haggett, and simply said, ‘I really want to make a game that does this one. ”

Now, the pair is ready to show the result: I’m dead, a fun and colorful game that launches later this year on the Nintendo Switch and PC. It’s essentially a puzzle game. You play as Morris Lupton, the recently deceased curator of a museum on a small British island, who uses his ghostly powers to view objects and learn more about their owners. (He also gets some help from his dog who, of course, is also a ghost.)

Lupton can float across the island and peer into the minds of various residents to learn about objects that are important to them. He must then find named objects by peeling back layers of things; in one instance during a short hands-off demo, I saw the developers dig into an old armchair and find a distance and some coins underneath, and later venture inside a beehive filled with many buzzing creatures.

It’s beautiful to look at, though it can be a little difficult to describe how things play out. You should take a closer look at the progression of gameplay below:

Hogg and Haggett made the whimsical musical adventure earlier Hohokum as well as Wilmot’s Warehouse, a game about very organized. Hogg says that’s the inspiration for I’m dead came not only from a desire to run everyday objects through an MRI scanner, but also from an urge to put world building and storytelling at the forefront. Games like Hohokum had colorful characters and intriguing worlds, but players hurried through by playing them. I’m deadon the other hand is much slower pace, and requires players to analyze objects closely and, over time, learn more about the island and its inhabitants.

‘We felt a lot of love in the world of Hohokum, ”Says Hogg. ‘But because Hohokum has no text in it, or any voice-over, it’s all things that are just implied. A very specific type of very observant person sees it and enjoys it. But a lot of people just whisper through that game and they don’t really notice the funny little in-jokes. We talked a lot about making a game where the kinds of stories and world building we made shot themselves forward, and the thing was to bring the player closer. “

In the little I saw, I’m deadThe small island town is sure to be explored. On the one hand, it is a quintessentially English coastal town, a former fishing village that has since turned to tourism and the arts, with a ferry shuttling visitors every day. But it is also rather strange. There are bird people and fruit people; the budget community includes a sculptor who is an apple and a critic who is a pipe-smoke pear. One of the most popular restaurants serves nothing but toast because there is a race of fish people who love the novelty of dry food.

It’s all very own and charming, the kind of place you want to spend some time in picking, which is good because that’s the whole starting point of the game. I’m dead may have an ominous title and premise, but there is nothing darker than uncomfortable about it. It’s almost calming – that’s a bit of a trend for developers. In many ways, I’m dead is very different from the games that Haggett and Hogg have made in the past, but the couple is of the opinion that there is a common thread that runs through all of his creations.

“There’s definitely a sensitivity in all of our games,” Hogg said. “We are really focused on making games that are not stressful, and that are quite relaxing. We have told people that they find our games therapeutic, and that is something I really strive for. Every time we talk about making a game, we like to try to create something different from what we’ve done before. At the same time, you can not help being who you are, and hopefully a lot of our personality and enthusiasm comes into play. “