Square Enix is a developer I’ve loved since they were Squaresoft, since the early Final Fantasy days, but I’m slowly coming to grips with their average games the last few years. They have quite a plethora of games for the iOS, which I would love to be ported over to Android, but ImaginaryRange is a good start. The game is a mix of mini-games, comics, and interactive art. It has a nice artistic, shaded drawing style, and there are hidden objects within the art that allow you to collect coins as you go along. The idea is that you draw a circle around things you want to pick up, swipe from page to page, and the “boss-battles” have mini-games that you must complete to continue.
The mini-games themselves are practically rips of Flight Director/Air Control, Space Invaders, and every slide-tile game ever, and these games are very easy to beat. The game only took an hour or so to beat, but it has a few bonuses at the end to add to the replay value. There are scratch-off games to unlock artwork or back-stories (after beating the game, I only won one scratch-off game out of fifteen or so, very annoying). You can play the mini-games after you beat the game to collect more coins; they are fun for all of ten minutes.
The story, the reason Square Enix has most of their fans, isn’t stellar, but it has potential. This game/comic is one of a series so we’ll see how they flesh out the story. In this beginning, there are two (supposed) protagonists fighting a monster in Paris. One has a magic device, they use this to create objects to fight the monster, which is, of course, controlled by a secretive group who the protagonists have a mutual history. We’ll see how far this story can go as Square Enix releases additional stories (hopefully not for a price).
Overall, I enjoy comics, and ImaginaryRange has pretty, stylized visuals. The images can’t be rotated which is an annoyance as some of the screens use only a third of the available real estate (you can double-tap to view an entire “page”). The story is still developing, and the mini-games are a good way of engaging the reader. We’ll see if Square Enix can create a nice universe for this amalgamation, and hopefully not steal the mini-games from their respective developers.
Click or Scan the QRCode below to grab a copy or find out more information about Imaginary Range.
Summary and Downloads:
Application:Â ImaginaryRange
Developer:Â SQUARE ENIX Co.,Ltd.
Cost:Â FREE
