Playing Fract is a slow and methodical experience. You're given very little information on what to do or how to do it — at first I found myself simply walking around, inspecting the strange and colorful alien architecture. Eventually you'll be working through puzzles made of buttons and movable objects that have to be solved in order to progress and open up new areas to explore.

"Anyone can experiment and twist knobs and have fun."

These puzzles prove to be surprisingly intuitive, despite the lack of instructions and the abstract visuals. I had no musical background whatsoever, but managed to find solutions to problems that involved rhythm and timing; I just needed to do a bit of experimentation. Essentially the game becomes a musical toy, and progress is based on learning to use that toy properly. Eventually you're even given access to a virtual studio environment where you can put what you learned into practice, and actually compose your own music that can be exported out of the game. If you’re new to musical theory, you might even learn what things like pitch and voice mean.

The idea for the game formed years ago, when Flanagan built the earliest version of Fract while still a student at the University of Montreal. He continued to work on it in his spare time, before eventually submitting the game to the Independent Games Festival and ultimately winning the best student game award in 2011. That award encouraged him to flesh out the experience into a commercial release, enlisting the help of his wife Quynh Nguyen, who served as a producer and designer, as well as programmer Henk Boom and musician Alex Taam.

In some ways, Fract mirrors Flanagan's own experience with music. He has no proper musical training, but learned to make his own electronic tracks by playing around with different software. "I draw a lot of inspiration from tools," he explains. Early on, the team had bigger ambitions when it came to teaching players about music, hoping to really get into the nitty gritty of synthesizers and how they work. But it turned out that didn't really make for a great game. "So we readjusted our goals and got back to the root of what inspired the game — the idea that music making can be playful," explains Nguyen. "You don't necessarily have to have a musical background or be a musician, anyone can experiment and twist knobs and have fun."