koksik

This was so strange and cool. I'm a little bummed it was only a ten minute experience, because it really left me wanting more. It's not often a game so quickly and effortlessly establishes such a fascinating setting.

Also, 'tis free, so why not try it.

NO JUMPSCARES this is just psychological and pretty scary.

The Imagined Leviathan is a walking simulator, where you are in the pure freezing snow and need to go forward and deliver the warning to the future generations.

The graphics is quite unique. This contrast of colors can be annoying, but I quite liked it. Shadows works great, there are lot of tricky "illusions", which works perfectly too. The way to show the subtitles are smart, however sometimes hard to find where you can read them, but not too bad. Need to say, there are small bugs like props get into each other or you can get lost thanks to the graphics, but not too bad... just don't play it in pitch dark.

Controls is okay too. You need directional guys, few plus action button and a mouse. Really easy to get hang on, not too bad and you can change it too.

Sound and music is kinda generic. Thing is, you can't hear much different from sound wise. You can hear the wind, your sound when you walking and sometimes other unknown things, but that's all. Those works well. I didn't noticed the music, but either it's fit well, or there is none, but sound wise, this game is okay.

This is a walking simulator with just a few survival elements. You need to collect memorise around the map and make fire from wood, burnable stuff and from the memories you collected, because you can get froze to death. Slowly you start to understand what happened in the world and you find out your goal too. The game is scary and nerving at the same time, which is good in this case. It's relaxing, yet you feel unsafe all the time... without any reason. Game also have just few smaller scares too.

However, for me the start of the game, it was really sudden. Sadly, I wasn't able to play through the game, because I got lost so many times, and actually, I wasn't able to die either. When I find out what I need to do, sadly I didn't had any stories. The game doesn't have much, you can quickly see what the game can hold in it's 15 minutes, but to be honest it's not big of a deal, because the game is around 30 minutes - 1 hour long.

The Imagined Leviathan is a relaxing game to play, if you want to explore a dead world with interesting visuals, I can definetly recommend. If you want to know a bit of book like world and story, you don't need to find another game.

The game itself is...weird. I get that they wanted to go with artsy, but honestly there are bits where the graphics are so bad it has to out-and-out tell you which way to go.

I first discovered these developers when they copied the introduction to a famous movie and attempted to make a short game out of it. I was checking up on reviews on them, learning more, when I discovered someone claiming the developer chard was mocking people who gave them a bad review on Twitter, claiming they just didn't get it.

That left a bad taste in my mouth, so I posted something on their discussion panel stating that this wasn't right...that they should learn to accept dissenting opinions and even use them for dialogue.

They banned me from the forum and deleted my post.

Never trust developers that censor honest feedback, be it positive or critical. Nor should you trust developers that censor their players. But ESPECIALLY ones that do both then try to use sensitive topics like this to do fundraising.

Tweet:

https://twitter.com/animtree/status/1280113275036975105

There's potential here. And I wanna like this, I really do. But it's borderline unplayable. And the reason I think there are more confused reviews are simply because people who had my experience probably won't bother reviewing the game, especially considering that it's free. But I feel the need to do so, mostly as a manner to give a heads up to other players so that they don't have the same experience I did, and also as a manner to alert the devs to what may become a serious problem once the full, paid version of this game is released.
(mild spoilers for the prologue incoming)

First playthrough, everything goes fine until I finish the fire. Then it tells me to go into the void. I take a right from the fireplace and follow the instructions. Might as well, since the void is everywhere, right? Wrong. I realise after a while that I've hit an invisible wall. Maybe I took it too literally. Try to backtrack to the fireplace, but apparently fall off a cliff. Not like you can tell, it's pretty much impossible to make out any sort of depth, although I suppose that's the point. Ok, apparently I'm freezing. How does this hypothermia system work? Is there any way to calculate the time you have and the time you don't have? No? ok. Desperately try and grab fuel and kindling and try to light a fire, except I dunno how. Am I supposed to figure it out on my own? Or can I only light in fireplaces? I guess it's the latter. I desperately try to find one, only to run out of time and die.

Most people would stop playing here. Why? It's simple. You can have unforgiving survival metrics, but there's things you need to do in order to capture the audience playing your game. This prologue doesn't have that, beyond the initial recorded speech, and the slow movement speed doesn't help. For a lot of people it'll be nothing more than utter confusion and staring at a blank screen. Why would they come back?

For a good example of how to tackle this, look at getting over it with Bennett Foddy. The gameplay there too is something that would be frustrating and uninteresting with plenty of setbacks, but to keep the player engaged you have Foddy constantly talking to you, the player, and that dialogue is pretty good and pretty interesting, at times funny and at times heartfelt. That's something that keeps the player engaged, keeps him going. Consider perhaps adding a monologue for the character we play as that activates randomly outside of the worded inscriptions.

So, that said, why did I continue playing the game? Well, As frustrated and as tempted to quit as I was, I did want to find out if there was something more. I was sure that there was.

2nd attempt: I decided to try the "just press W" strategy. Lit fire, went past the rocks. I arrive at a cliff. I'm guessing it's the same cliff I fell off of before. Aight, let's go back to the place we were and try to find a fireplace again! I go down the cliff and reach the same forested area I was in before. Try to do so, no dice. I die before I find one

3rd attempt: Lit fire. Found cliff. Here I see a house close to me. Maybe I'm supposed to go there? Go down the cliff, try to get to house, die before I get there.

4th Attempt: Like the second, except I try to make it there quicker and try to search the area. I arrive at a sort of wall, and then promptly die.

5th Attempt: This time while going down the cliff I seem to find a hole in the map and keep falling for eternity. That's it.

I decide then to experience the prologue through a youtube playthrough. There must be something I was missing. And there was. In the two playthroughs I watch on youtube, the people playing manage to survive a bit longer than me by going to the left of the cliff. However, even they end up dying around 10 minutes in due to sheer confusion regarding the way the game works. This confirmed something. I'm not alone here. And that's where my journey with this prologue stops.

I'm sure that the game has more to offer. I mean, I barely actually even played any of the game, at least from the impression I got. So maybe there's a great storyline and thoughtful philosophy awaiting me. But my patience can only go so far. All that means squat if I'm too frustrated and confused to ever find them. And what the games offers me without that is pretty much nothing, except art and atmosphere (which are fine and interesting, but hardly enough to carry the game).

You can have a harsh survival game. You can absolutely choose not to hold the player's hand. You can have the player die and restart from the beginning. You can even confuse the player on purpose. What you cannot do is do all of the above without giving more reason than pressing W at a white screen or blindly following a rather bare scenery to play your game, and this seems to be the case for a good chunk of the beginning of the prologue. In the end, it's your game, so it's your choice. But please do consider adding more things to hook the player in to make experiences like mine more bearable. Or a sprint button, at the risk of breaking immersion.

Rating: N/A (this is a demo)

Certainly loved this game. Gonna use it for teaching my students English, I believe they will like :-)

And yep, I got a frostbite simply by playing it

Very short, but nice, deep, & free. So what? A small piece of art.

Mildly recommended.

I have somewhat mixed feelings. The world is really interesting, harsh and minimalist. It's a bit more than a walking sim, but not by much. The little stories are somewhat interesting, but they didn't really draw me in. The survival aspect is interesting and I think I saw a bizarre creature running around early on, but it was never expanded upon. It's free and if you like short survival games or apocalyptic stories, then you will likely find this worth a play through.

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