Imagine Me kind of reminded me of a surreal, relaxed Super Meat Boy when I first picked it up. The weird imagery and sombre music definitely give the difficult platformer a more subdued tone, but the game still possesses a lot of the same good qualities that made the latter game fun to play. It carries some of the same frustrations, too, as it’s a challenging easy game once you get going. The randomness of some of the levels certainly doesn’t make it much easier, either.
It’s in early access right now, so the experience is a bit bare bones at this point. Most of the levels I played felt more like a tutorial to the game, but the gameplay seems solid in this state. You have to maneuver around challenging little obstacle courses to reach the stage door, hopefully while collecting a snapshot of the character’s memory along the way. These memories provide the background story, if you’re interested in the dark tale that fuels the game, but otherwise you’re free to just keep yourself alive. It’s pretty basic platforming right now with some springboards with limited uses thrown in, although it is enjoyable. Jumping on the springboards is kind of hard in the build so far, as just running into the springboard makes you jump high. Jumping on it often results in lower jumps unless you have perfect timing, in which case you can launch yourself up. I found it very fussy, and hope it gets a little bit less particular as the game develops.
The big feature of the game seems to be its random levels. The system is interesting, but I have had issues with randomly-generated content in games before, and at this stage, it doesn’t seem to be helping Imagine Me much. Each level I tried was playable, but they don’t come together in any coherent or interesting way. You just play stage after stage of randomly-generated content, and that’s it. I think this all could develop into something interesting over time, and I do like the tone of the game, though, so it’s worth keeping an eye on while it fleshes out. You may need to decide for yourself if it’s worth your money yet, but I do think KinifiGames will take it someplace interesting by the time it’s done.
