Imago Season

An excellent bite-sized Disco-like. Great writing, great worldbuilding, great bug people!

Entretenido, intrigante y bien llevado para las elecciones posibles del personaje y duración de una partida. Me ha gustado.

It's not necessarily bad, but after about 30 minutes I no longer felt that continuing to play would be a valuable use of my time. I think for a first release from a studio that was very clearly limited on the scope of the game they could afford to produce it's alright, and there are definitely worse indies to play, but I was not really compelled to finish the game. I'll be comparing the game to Disco Elysium a lot, which is not really a fair comparison since that game had a much larger budget and studio behind it, but if you play the game for around 30 seconds you can see it's sort of inevitable. I'll start with the gameplay, I like the idea conceptually of placing a discolike in first person, but the scope limitations of this game really show here. The overall play area is extremely small, and your movement is very frequently blocked off by invisible walls to the extent where it does not feel like there is really any reward for exploration. There are some random pickups with resources here and there but from what I saw they are all just placed in plain sight. This leads to walking around the environment feeling pointless, the game seems to recognize this as well as there is a diagetic fast travel system to avoid walking for 30 seconds across the map. I have to wonder if the time spent modeling this world to be fully navigable in first person may have been better spent with either a simplified, isometric world that could allow the player to explore a larger area, or a more linear progression like a walking simulator to avoid the tedium of running back and forth to the same places. They've done a good job with creating an interesting visual atmosphere it just feels like the limited scope really hampers it. I was also frustrated with the skill check system, this is the only thing I will say is actively bad for the game. You don't need to spend so long on a dice roll animation, and then delay things even further as each of the numbers add up, and the stock drum roll noise while all of this is happening just feels cheap. Tell me I passed the check or I failed and move on, this is annoying not stressful. The writing isn't terrible, but also isn't great. This is where I think most of the disco-like games really fall flat, the others I have played all suffer from the same problem of focusing so much on copying Disco Elysium that they don't actually come up with anything interesting of their own to say. Imago Season is not the worst offender in this regard, but I think that's mostly because the writing just feels too bland to me to be particularly memorable. The game's prose is all written in a very straightforward way that doesn't really evoke any particular emotion in me. Occasionally the internal monologue will have a few lines that are written more artfully but it usually just comes across like some cheesy tumblr post. Characterization is applied inconsistently. Most NPCs in the game feel more like lore vending machines than characters, and the ones that are characters are usually a lore vending machine that also expresses one emotion. I also felt like the pacing of the game was totally off, which is a big part of why I lost interest so quickly. Another quick DE comparison, the amnesia trope is only really interesting if there's a clear hook to make you wonder who your character was. In Disco Elysium most of the characters you encounter know who you are to some degree. You learn different perspectives of who you are as the game unfolds in a really compelling way. You're also immediately dragged into a murder investigation, this establishes the stakes of what's unfolding and gives the player a sense of purpose behind their actions. Imago Season also has an amnesiac protagonist, but nobody else knows who you are either, and while you learn bits and pieces of who you might be while playing I never particularly cared. You just wake up and start wandering around until you find something to do. I never found anything, so I stopped playing. This may seem like a really harsh review. I actually do think there's potential here, but that this project didn't really live up to it. The other reviewers all seem to have had a positive experience with the game, so maybe things pick up later on. Or, maybe for them just wandering around and talking to some freaky bug people while some generic sci fi conflict takes place is enough for them. If you identify with the latter, maybe you'll like this, but that wasn't fulfilling enough for me personally.

[h1] Spoiler-free review [/h1] I stumbled upon [b]Imago Season[/b] on a reddit post. It was presented as a 1st person [b]narrative[/b] driven game with [b]skill checks[/b]. The [b]sci-fi[/b] setting and the [b]art[/b] style seemed interesting so I gave it a go. I don’t regret it ! [b]Imago Season[/b] is a [b]short[/b] but [b]captivating[/b] experience. The gameplay consists of [b]exploration[/b] (1st person) and navigating [b]dialogue trees[/b] (with multiple options that change depending on your past actions). The town of Tempura is [b]charming[/b] and its inhabitants are even more so. There are a handful of [b]quests[/b] to solve (with multiple approaches possible). They were really interesting and well written. The world of [b]Imago Season[/b] feels [b]alive[/b] ! Failing skill checks pushes you to find [b]alternative solutions[/b] to a problem. [strike]There is no save scumming possible through the game (as there is only one save slot that gets autosaved regularly). I wasn’t bothered by this and it makes choices more impactful ![/strike] It’s possible to save scum if you deactivate the autosave features. I suggest going through the game a first time without reloading saves to get a better dice roll. The [b]music[/b] suits the game well. The different tracks are enjoyable (even on repeat as you backtrack and explore). After finishing my first playthrough, I want to [b]start a new one[/b] in order to see some quests play out differently. It’s a [b]short game[/b] that doesn’t overstay its welcome. [h1] Should you buy it ? [/h1] If you like [b]reading[/b] and [b]sci-fi[/b] stories, you’ll likely enjoy this game ! I’m surprised this game has such a low review count at the moment. It’s really good and priced appropriately. [b]I recommend this game at full price ![/b]

I do wish it was longer, I got a single ending in about an hour and a half, but I appreciate the work and the creativity that went into this game. Pick it up if you want a concise and interesting story

What a gem! In just a few hours, this game made by an exceptionally small team has for sure not left me indifferent. Gameplay is easy and straightforward, its strength relying mainly on the story, worldbuilding and dialogues, and it surely knows how to make most of them. The skills system felt refreshing and interesting in the way the attributes and modifiers work. It also made it worth it to try things even when they fail, and there was more than one correct way to solve puzzles sometimes. The plot kept me intrigued the whole time, I found the characters charming and I absolutely loved the humor, injected into the text with enough subtlety to not make it just a bunch of "in your face" jokes. A lot of information is compressed in a very small town, so the game can feel to do too much exposition from time to time, but in my opinion it is well justified by the fact that the main character knows as little about it as the player. You can reach the ending in one or two afternoons, but the different choices and endings offered to the player give it further replayability.

The game's story is interesting but it failed to hook me. It plays like a book, with minimal things happening I front of you, with a much more focus on the text-based story. I tried to give it a go, turns out this type of games is something im not interested in.