The Imagined Leviathan: Prologue

This game (for me) exceeds in two areas. The actual gameplay + Story and the fact that it made me think. The gameplay is simple. You walk through the blizzard, carefully following whatever sign of [i] something [/i] you find. On the way you must construct fires to keep you warm then move forward. At first it seems that you can last a long time without fire, but the cold acts quickly and before you know it youre freezing to death and scrambling for fuel or kindling. The story itself is also quite interesting (with what little hints there are) and I do not know for sure but it seems something lovecraftian might be at play. Additionally the game made me actually stop and think. Along the way you can find these sort of memory things which begin a monologue. Each one made me think. The main theme I recognised throughout them is that dealing with or even thinking about something large (which, to me atleast, meant climate change) is exhausting. Its unpleasant and it is our nature and easier to move on, to ignore , to forget or otherwise shift the blame. Sorry if this didn't make sense, I'm ♥♥♥♥ at words but I hope this gets you to play the game :"

Imagine Leviathan, donmuş bir İngiliz köyünde geçen anlatısal bir hayatta kalma oyunudur. Kırsal bölgeyi keşfedin ve hayatta kalanları bir araya getirerek Leviathan'larınızla yüzleşmeye çalışın.

刚打开的时候全黑白的画风还让我觉得蛮眼前一亮的，结果过程又臭又长还很容易死。 玩了两遍，都是死在没生火，没耐心玩第三遍了。走路速度很慢还不能抄近道，第一次的时候把打火机丢半路了找不着冻死了，第二次路上根本干净得啥也没有生不了火冻死了，这两次生火中间隔的时间还很长，第一次我能长记性记住要拿着打火机，那你这个燃料是要我未卜先知吗？？？而且一开始的提示非要我不同东西用两只手拿，我特么还以为一只手只能拿一样东西呢，合着就是告诉我两只手都能用而已，可以只用一只手拿不同的燃料，但是打火机不能和燃料在同一只手.................... 所以说有必要把走路做的这么长吗？？？又没有很多故事情节又没有什么场景，还没有记录点，冻死的音效像我被车撞死的一样，真的很折磨。在雪地孤身一人的绝望感倒是体验到了。

A short and sweet experience with some interesting themes and ideas. I hope a full game is still in the works because with a bit of polish it could be something wonderful. - spoilers - You journey down a ruined wintery road in the middle of a blizzard, in hopes of finding something thatll keep you warm, be it shelter from the cold, warm food in your belly or the company of another survivor, keeping yourself from death as you travel with what fuel and kindling you can find, and your lighter. As you travel further you find messages, memories from the past with piecemeal wisdoms. On your journey you come upon a steel henge, peaceful and stagnant against the storm of snow. And thats essentially the end~! A short demo alluding to a more full experience. I enjoyed the time I had a fair amount, the visual style of the game is striking and theres moments of wonder and panic elicited purely from how empty the world is, and what emerges through the blizzard as you progress. The sound design is simple and not particularly interesting but adds to the atmosphere; nothing to complain about certainly. At one point I got lost and died towards the middle of the experience but took it in stride, the lack of visual information is no joke and made it very easy for me to lose track of my position, even when I thought Id planned my route perfectly. On that, I could see this game becoming tedious in a longer experience. I spent ~50 minutes playing and thats only because I got halfway through an attempt and got lost and died to attrition. If the full release has an intended runtime of 2-3 times that then I imagine many players would be turned away. More transparent/lenient mechanics would be a boon here, maybe a proper inventory and simply making resources somewhat more scarce to counterbalance, or the ability to find unfinished campfires (which would add to the atmosphere) beyond the one in the 'tutorial' segment would suffice. Some extra clarity in your facing direction and the path youre following would also help as its easy to get lost, maybe just some extra environmental features and/or a compass so you can tell how much youve changed your heading; the ability to lose yourself in the blizzard adds to the immersion and experience but too much can make the game unapproachable or unplayable, especially if a full game would be 2-3 *hours* long. I found the short stories you come across interesting. I only found three if theres any more then idk. The first about the teacher, I didnt really understand but the idea of hiding a revelation came across. The second was somewhat tragic as I was listening, letting yourself go in the wake of a loss you never saw coming to the point of endangering yourself and others in the same way that lead you down this path, an ouroboros of suffering. The third I seem to recall as being a passage from "To Build A Fire" by Jack London, a story about being underprepared and overconfident and the entropic nature of surviving in the cold, very thematic for this game :3 (if im wrong about that then my apologies haha, but still very on-the-nose !) Overall I liked this, as far as games go its not incredible but its moody and artsy and the themes its playing with deserve to be fleshed out. In my mind I can see something truly great emerging from this fog. Unfortunately it seems the project was ended a while ago, this and the main page for Imagined Leviathans have no updates since 2021 and the last title from the publisher was 2020; which is especially tragic since the reviews are mostly positive. If this ever gets picked up again Id be delighted to experience it but Im not getting my hopes up. Still an excellent little experience that I dont regret spending my time with.

C'est pas mauvais mais c'et loin d'être bon.

Настолько посредственный "выживач", что я вышел на 5 минуте из 20 заявленных разработчиком и пошёл смотреть на Ютубе как она проходится. Вначале выдаётся текст, мол игрок скоро умрёт от холода, но... здесь он помрёт от скуки... ;)

It's sadly a bit too heavy for my computer, so it played more slowly. Maybe some graphics settings would help. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful game, and the minimalistic graphics manage to convey the feeling that you're caught in a snowstorm easily. The way the stories are told in the sky is mesmerising, but don't be fooled: you still need fuel for your fire. I'll see how far more I can get in this game. There's still things to see I believe that I didn't get to see because of frostbite.

"The Imagined Leviathan: Prologue" is is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "The Imagined Leviathan". The Imagined Leviathan is a garbage tier "artsy" walking sim with no meaningful content (checking the developers other games it seems that's all they could churn out, nobody wanted them), so they gave up on making this one. But this isn't completely relevant because this is not The Imagined Leviathan, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with "The Imagined Leviathan: Prologue" too. Usually the purpose of these advertisements is to get you to shell out money to the developer to buy the full product, but the developer hasn't bothered actually making a product you can buy, leaving this as an advertisement for nothing. We must question what value this pointless advertising has for gamers... and the answer is "none". Due to the poor public response amongst gamers for this advertisement, it seems unlikely the developer will go on to make the full product. This game is fairly dated at 6 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. As an advertisement, this is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace. It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers. Advertisements and incorrectly published demos don't add +1 to your game collector count, they aren't full games. It's impossible for me to recommend this incorrectly published advertising spam to gamers, you deserve better than adverts.