One of my favourite pieces of software for the Nintendo DSi was Flipnote Studio, a free creation tool that let anyone, regardless of experience or skill level, try their hand at short, flipbook-style animations.

Admittedly, I was never any good at it, never producing anything that I was comfortable sharing with anyone but friends and family, but that didn't stop me from pretending like I was the next Chuck Jones, pouring countless hours into devising fun little animations that probably looked like chicken scratch in retrospect.

Why am I bringing all this up now? I hear you ask, having undoubtedly failed to read the headline. Well, there's a new game coming to Steam, called Reason & Rhyme, which, among other things, has a ridiculously charming art style that seems laser-focused on people with a nostalgia for the memorable DSi app.

Reason & Rhyme is the latest project from Toyful Games, a studio comprised of the developers Tim Fitzrandolph (JellyCar, Where's My Water?, Parking Garage Rally Circuit) and Chad Cable (Where’s My Water?, Disney Emoji Blitz).

It is described as a "short two-player online co-operative cartoony adventure" and has an art style "heavily influenced by Flipnote", according to Fitzrandolph, with the team going to great lengths to research and recreate the Flipnote style before evolving it further to what you see today.

As the Steam page states, the title isn't being designed to be a 40-60-hour epic, but is instead being pitched as a short game that can be completed in "an afternoon" — or "perhaps a few sessions". The set-up is this: players take control of flightless birds dropped onto a mysterious island, with the goal being to use proximity chat to communicate and solve environmental puzzles to find a way back to safety.

There's some egg-xcellent news, too, for those who want to give it a try: a Steam demo is already available.