Game Classification

Drunk on power after defeating a terrible dragon, an enchanter's mind snaps and for the good of himself and the community he is imprisoned in an insidious donjon, each chamber containing a more whimsical challenge than the last. Maybe, the villagers hope, by the time he cools off and gathers his senses enough to successfully run the gauntlet, he'll have become sufficiently rehabilitated to reintegrate into human society without posing a threat to anyone... except perhaps the next dragon that comes along.

An enhanced Windows remake of Michael St Aubyn's Micro Power classic far ahead of its time (1986) on the BBC Micro B/B+/Master and Electron, this game will keep Jill of the Jungle fans up with 16 levels of polymorphic platform game puzzle-solving; an object-using wizard can shift to the forms of a climbing monkey and a leaping cat to evade foes, cross obstacles and devise unconventional uses for peculiar objects, all toward the goal of recovering the spell fragment at each level's end and, ultimately, escape from the gaol when all sixteen fragments are collected. Like the three specialist-heroes of The Lost Vikings, all these abilities will be called into selective use in every level; where it differs (more akin to Infocom's Arthur) is that as a shapeshifter, only one body manifests at a time.

Experimentation and trial-and-error are the key, but not too much; while it is impossible to die in this game, Imogen the wizard is saddled with a tight limit on the amount of transformations he can undergo (150, across 16 levels) -- and when that well runs dry, there's no replenishing it. A small margin of wiggle room is built in (31, a walkthrough claims), but you may want to replay occasional transformation-expensive reflex puzzles to ensure you'll have enough to not only pass the level, but pass ALL the levels and finish the game.

The levels are played in what amounts to a random sequence, each featuring a wacky or punny name (eg. Baboonacy, Hamster-Jam), so if the player is unsuccessful at solving a particular puzzle, it's still possible to explore the rest of the game. Since there is only one solution for most of the puzzles, replay value is minimal beyond the speedrunning-style challenge of how-few-transformations-can-I-get-away-with-using, but (despite a recurring penchant for cartoony animal abuse and a finicky physics engine complicating jumping on to edges of platforms - the follow-through is important) the puzzles and animations are sufficiently charming that you may find yourself recommending it to a friend after a happy all-nighter working out the mysteries at the heart of this surprisingly-accessible relic from another age. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/imogen/