Figment E Ink Gaming Handheld Will Use AI To Expand Games Beyond What Authors Designed

Gaming handhelds have become quite the fad these days, from the ultra-light Nintendo Switch to the bulky handheld PCs to retro designs that recreate experiences of past decades. You might think the market is now over-saturated with these devices, but there might still be some wiggle room for less conventional designs. And no, we’re not talking about DIY contraptions that are mostly meant to run emulators.

Figment is one of the extremely few handheld devices that have one particularly unique feature. Instead of a traditional LCD or OLED display, it uses E Ink or E-Paper Display (EPD) technology, the grayscale kind that is used in E-book readers. While this display does mean you won’t even be able to enjoy old 8-bit games, especially the ones in color, it does open the door to a different kind of interactive experience, one that encourages leisurely exploring worlds through text and maybe a bit of pixelated imagery as well.

Designer: Pedro Luraschi

Unlike the Ink Console, Figment’s design resembles a traditional gaming handheld that’s meant to be held with both hands. It has directional and action buttons, which is the only interaction method possible on this touchless 7.5-inch horizontal E Ink display. On the surface, it might seem like a very insignificant difference, but the design makes it clear that rather than an E-reader, this device is really meant more for gaming.

Of course, the games you’ll be playing on this device will mostly be text-based games enhanced by a few images here and there. In other words, this is pretty much the modern digital version of those Choose Your Own Adventure books you might have enjoyed as a kid. A key difference, however, is that a “game” might even go beyond the author initially wrote, all thanks to AI.

Figment will utilize AI to write new text and generate new images to fill out game paths that the authors didn’t write, at least depending on the choices that users make. On the one hand, this opens each and every book to almost infinite possibilities. On the other hand, this AI functionality requires Internet access because Figment isn’t powerful enough to store and run AI models on the device itself. Fortunately, once the new content has been generated and downloaded, it stays on the device so you can access those paths again and again even when offline.

At the moment, Figment is more of a personal DIY experiment rather than an actual product you can buy or back through crowdfunding. There is a possibility that both the build and the software will be made available to the public, though it will most likely require some electronics know-how and access to a 3D printer at the very least.