Imagine Me (PC) (2014)

Overview: Imagine Me is a procedurally generated platformer. You play as Robbe, the shy kid.



Recommendation: I played Imagine Me in both November 2014 and February 2015. While the game had improved and had a couple of strong points, it remained a sub-par video game. In particular, the main campaign was boring and the game lacked appeal. Unless the game improves somehow, I wouldn't recommend it.

20141120:
According to Steam, I logged a whole seventy-five minutes with Imagine Me. I'll have to double-check how, but I recall the disappointing experience.

Upon starting the game, I thought the opening title page and song were well-done and they got me excited. Unfortunately, they were misleading and the game itself was nothing like them. This was as deceptive as a movie of genre X with a trailer pushing genre Y, where X is not equal to Y.


Getting into the game, I repeatedly played the first level because it was hard, and I eventually finished it. Surprisingly, the game seemed to have sent me back to the first level! What the heck!?! Ignoring this anomaly I pressed on.

As I continued repeating the first level, I couldn't shake the idea that the levels were supposedly procedurally-generated. However, whenever I died, I would end up playing the exact same level.

In any case, eventually the game advanced me and I was in a room where I had to to defeat all the level's minions and then beat the (unimpressive) goblin boss.


Upon slaying the goblin, I was advanced to the next level. There I walked right and dropped down from the entrance into a completely empty room. At first I thought this was intentional, but after meticulously searching, I concluded the game was bugged. Of course the worse part I couldn't manually exit the menu, because the game lacked a menu!*

Putting my best foot forward, I started back at square one. Unfortunately, the game reproduced what had happened earlier: two or three repetitions of the first level, followed by the boss level, and then followed by an empty room.

At this point, I couldn't bear to play anymore of the boring story mode. Instead I switched over to the short and quick puzzle mode. The levels here remind me of Time Fcuk and VVVVVV.


*As of 20151126, the game has a menu through which the player can leave a level.

[20150208][20151126 Edit]

20150208:
Today I played Imagine Me again and the game had been fixed. Upon completing the first level, the game took me to a second level, and upon completing the second level, it took me to the third level, and so on. While the levels were well-constructed, the first boss - some sort of ghost - was as boring as the goblin boss I fought the first time I played the game.

After playing a couple more levels, I was bored and stopped playing the campaign mode. As a side note, the game didn't save my progress and returning to the campaign brought me back to square one.


Speaking of starting back at square one, the game was now procedurally generated. Furthermore, at any time the player can pause and choose to either respawn (start over at the beginning of the level) or regenerate (regenerate the level*).

*I only tried the regenerate function on the first level. I'm not sure how the function behaves on levels other than the first.

Then I played the challenge mode. This was my favorite part of the game the last time I sat down to play Imagine Me and it remained my favorite part of the game.


With respect to the challenge mode, I had the impression that the levels have gotten a little harder (which I considered an improvement). Another improvement was that the game now distinguished between which levels have been completed and which have not: levels which have been completed are illuminated, while those which have yet to be completed are dull.

20151126:
Today I played a little bit more of Imagine Me. In particular, I completed all the challenge levels and played enough of the campaign to defeat a boss and get all of the game's achievements.

Imagine Me (PC) (2014)


Relevant Links:
Imagine Me Website
Imagine Me (PC) (Metacritic.com)
Imagine Me (Steam Store Page)

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