Figment Review – Can You Trust What You See?

Disclaimer: Figment was provided for free by CMYK, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Following up on the review of Fruit Fight comes the second entry in CMYK’s Magenta series: Figment. It’s another fun, quirky and easy going card game, but this time you’ll leave the game table wondering if you’ll ever trust your eyesight again!

With games like Wavelength and Wilmot’s Warehouse, CMYK has become that publisher for me. The one where every game feels like something you haven’t played before. Figment keeps that streak going.

How to play

Figment is a cooperative game where you and your friends stare at abstract geometric pictures and try to rank them based on how much of a specific colour they contain. Sounds easy? Well, wait until you’re squinting at a small silver square and trying to decide if it has more silver than six tiny silver dots.

As far as card games go, playing Figment couldn’t be simpler. Each round starts with the first player drawing a colour card—blue, green, silver, or magenta. That’s the colour you’ll be ranking for the round. Then, one by one, players draw from the picture card deck and add their card to a line-up, ordering them from the least of the chosen colour on the left and with the most on the right.

Once five cards are placed, it’s time to gamble. At the start of the game, your team gets a set of point chips, ranging from one to five points. Before flipping the cards, you’ll wager one of them based on how confident you are in your ranking.

Then comes the moment of truth—flip the cards to reveal the actual percentages of the selected colour on the back. If your line-up is spot on, great! If not, well… maybe it’s time for an eye test.

Your team earns one point for each correctly placed card, plus you keep the point chip you wagered if you got all five in the right order. After five rounds, total up your points and compare them to the scoring table in the rulebook to see if you walked away with a bronze, silver, or gold performance.

Wait… There’s more blue?!

Figment is one of those card games you can jump into immediately. Ordering cards by the amount of colour? Simple. Everyone gets it.

At least, that’s what you think.

A few turns in, you’ll find yourself laughing because, somehow, your brain refuses to cooperate. Sure, if every shape were the same, this game would be a breeze. But when you’re comparing, say, the area of 15 straight lines to the outline of a large circle? Suddenly, logic leaps out the window, and you have no idea what the right answer is.

There’s a lot of humour in that disconnect. What starts as an easy task turns into a surprisingly tricky challenge. But the game keeps things light by mixing in plenty of obvious comparisons, so it never gets frustrating.

That said, I was shocked at how far off my guesses were. I’d be sure two cards were close, only to flip them over and see they were off by 10–20%. It genuinely messes with your perception, which is great and a lot of fun… but also deeply concerning when you realise you’re no longer sure what blue is.

Thankfully, it’s a cooperative game and you can ask for help when needed. Though whether you actually get help is another story. My wife and I had more than a few playful arguments when I confidently guessed… and was completely wrong.

And the playful arguments don’t stop there. At the end of each round, you have to wager a point chip, and let me tell you, this is another minefield of second-guessing.

Not once in any of my plays did I feel truly confident in our lineup, so choosing which chip to wager felt like a mix of strategy, gut instinct, and sheer guesswork. That meant you had to engage with the group, talk it out, and somehow reach a consensus, or at least commit to whatever chip felt least wrong. I loved this mechanic because it keeps everyone involved and sparks some hilarious debates over the ridiculous decisions we’ve all made.

Now, a common concern with games like this is that once you’ve gone through the deck a couple of times, you start memorising the answers. But Figment avoids that issue, since the cards look so similar and each one has four different comparisons, there’s no real way to game the system (unless you’ve been secretly training for this moment since childhood).

At the end of the day, Figment is another fantastic light-hearted game from CMYK and Wolfgang Warsch. It’s great for families or as a quick, fun way to wrap up a game night. I wouldn’t call it a main event, but as a side dish? It’s perfect… and unlike anything I’ve played before.