Moomin: Midsummer Madness boards a floating theatre

The Moomin family are perched on their red roof, looking across a valley that has become a lake. A chimney and another rooftop poke through the water nearby. It's a wonderfully odd starting point for Moomin: Midsummer Madness: home is still recognisable, but getting around it has become a rather different proposition. A floating theatre offers the family somewhere to go, with costumes, scripts and new problems waiting inside.

Crossbridge Game Studios' single-player point-and-click adventure arrives on PC, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on 12 November. It follows Tove Jansson's novel Moominsummer Madness, bringing familiar scenes together with new episodes. You explore, talk to characters, solve puzzles and play mini-games as Moomintroll and Little My try to find their way home. A free Steam demo currently offers the opening chapter, making this a useful moment to meet these particular Moomins.

A house under water, a theatre afloat

The story begins with Moomintroll waiting for Snufkin to return from his travels. Then the flood arrives, carrying the family towards a strange building. The theatre is a lovely choice of refuge for this cast: a place already full of other people's stories, clothes and make-believe. Shochiku describes an adventure that recreates scenes from the novel while adding its own storyline, so readers who know the book have new encounters to look forward to alongside the familiar journey.

Water changes the appearance of the places you visit, too. One official screenshot shows Moomintroll swimming through a blue-tinted interior, past a staircase and a fireplace. Starfish cling to the walls, plants curl around the room and the furniture remains neatly in place. The scene has the peculiar pleasure of a house behaving like an underwater landscape. Elsewhere, the Moominhouse stands bright blue among flowers, with a ladder propped beside its veranda. These are appealingly detailed spaces to spend time looking around.

That illustration style was a deliberate development choice. Crossbridge considered a purely black-and-white approach before settling on a soft colour palette that would preserve the warmth it found in Jansson's drawings. In Shochiku's making-of account, the team describes spending months adapting elements of the original artwork into playable locations. It also reports creating more than 300 animations for poses and expressions. The little figures have plenty to communicate inside those busy backgrounds.

The adaptation work extends to the actions. Crossbridge describes taking passages in which the book's characters observe events and developing them into quests and interactions for the player. Cameos draw on other Moomin stories as well. For someone returning to a favourite novel, that's an inviting approach: its places become somewhere to investigate, while the expanded cast gives you more company along the way. The original book supplies a setting with room for curiosity.

Little My has her own way through

Moomintroll supplies the main perspective, with control passing to Little My at certain points. The characters' different talents help with obstacles and puzzles: some can swim well, while others can fit into narrow spaces. That gives the cast a practical role in the journey. A small character and a good swimmer have different ways to approach a flooded world, and finding the person suited to a problem fits an adventure about helping each other home.

The puzzle screens keep the storybook presentation. One press image places a drawing of a sailing ship on a large sheet of paper, surrounded by pale silhouettes. Along the bottom are illustrated objects including leaves, a spool of thread and a wooden piece; a small diagram in the corner links two leaf shapes to a third. Moomintroll and Little My stand on either side of the page. Even this closer view of a puzzle belongs visually to the same leafy valley.

Conversations, hidden clues and mini-games break up the exploration, and a built-in hint system offers help when you get stuck. Beginner-friendly puzzles are part of the announced design, giving newcomers a clear reason to consider it. For another gentle introduction to solving problems with younger players, our Hasbro Junior Collection preview explores a classroom case designed around family board-game play. Moomin's adventure follows one player's progress through a continuous story.

The Steam demo contains the first of the full game's six chapters. Its announced availability ends at 17:00 UTC on 26 October, so there's a short window left to try it before November. The demo uses the same content offered at Tokyo Game Show and supports twelve languages, including English, Finnish and Swedish. It gives you a whole opening chapter in which to judge whether this style of conversation and puzzling suits you.

Shochiku lists all three versions for 12 November, with Nintendo confirming one-player TV, tabletop and handheld play on Switch 2. Physical editions have also been announced for both Nintendo systems. The immediate attraction is a small, specific adventure: a family displaced by a flood, a theatre full of possibilities and friends whose talents help them through. There's a pleasing amount of mischief in finding your next puzzle where someone else's stage used to be.