Distributor: Southpeak Interactive Developer: Robert Redford's Sundance Institute Introduction: Welcome to the wacky world of Imagynasium. Developed in conjunction with Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, Southpeak Interactive serves up a children's creativity program that really delivers. With three unique worlds to explore, along with many fun tools and games, Imagynasium facilitates the creative process through storytelling, art/collages and music. With lively characters to lead you on the journey of creative expression and helpful tools to help spark it when you are stuck for ideas, Imagynasium is sure to bring out the creative genius in all of us. Imagynasium also features the voices of Glenn Close and Jonathan Winters. Imagynasium is a free-for all creative explosion of sights and sounds. Specifications: Minimum System Requirements: Made for Win95/98 platform only. Pentium 133 MHz processor Windows 95.98 16 MB RAM 4x CD-ROM Drive 16 Bit Windows Compatible Sound Card SVGA Graphics Card (16 Bit) 2 MB VRAM Strongly Recommended Mouse 30 MB of Hard Disk Space Installation: The installation for Imagynasium was quite painless. When the installation begins you are given three choices Install, Browse, or Quit. After selecting the obvious choice to install, accept the Licensing Agreement, and the default locations for the installation directory. Files will start to be installed to your hard drive. The setup program will also install DirectX 6 for you. From there simply select Imagynasium from your start menu programs from the SouthPeak Interactive folder. Graphics: Imagynasium has created some lively and animated characters for this game. Most of the images they have used are surreal to say the least. They have a wide variety of characters and pictures in a vast array of creative styles, which helps fulfil the purpose of Imagynasium, which is to spark creativity. What a better way to do this than to break away from the somewhat repetitive genre of cartoons and children's animations to something a little less than ordinary. The only downside to the graphics appears when trying to resize any of the images. The image can become quite pixelated and can lose a lot of its definition in the process. Sound: The sound files that come with the game are assorted and clever. In the Jingle Jungle, kids can choose from different sound effects and male and female vocals to compose interesting musical compositions. The quality of the actual sound files is adequate for the purpose of the game. The characters that inhabit the world of Imagynasium are full of comical verbal information to help you through the game. The audio clips and music sounded quite good on my sound card. Gameplay: Imagynasium is divided into 3 levels -- 1) The Main Skyscape Screen This main area allows you access to the collection and activity areas. Navigating through the program's different levels can take a little getting used to. You move your cursor around the screen until it turns into an arrow, then click to go somewhere new. If you wish to return to the previous level you were on, you move your cursor to the bottom of your screen until it turns into a large downward pointing arrow, and then click. An upward pointing arrow takes you forward to a new level. In the Level 2 areas you can move left and right by moving your cursor to the far right or left edges of the screen until it turns into a left or right arrow and clicking. 2) The Collection Areas (Jingle Jungle, Downtown & Curio Shop) and The Tower The Jingle Jungle, is a free spirited musical free for all hosted by the zany antics of Riff. Kids can place and manipulate sounds from the large assortment provided to create varied and even complex musical creations. The added reverse, chorus and pitch effects were very fun to play with help to develop a creative aural tapestry of sounds and music. Downtown, kids get to hang out with Frida; an urban artist with a flare for collages. Here, the kids get to develop their artistic skills. You are encouraged to explore the different worlds by clicking on objects, which will reveal their hidden properties. You can collect the images you like and store them in your collector to take to the canvas. Changing the orientation and size, adjusting the sound properties, or animating it can alter each object that you import to the canvas. You can combine your images with different backgrounds to achieve some very interesting and diverse animated collages. In the Curio Shop, the wise Monda welcomes children. A writer and a collector of rare and precious items (to him anyway), Monda is your guide through the adventures of creative writing. Each page of your story can include sounds or music, characters, and the narrative. After constructing your masterpiece, you can view it as a slide show. 3.) The 3 Studios where the activities and games are located Info Station This is the nerve center for getting help on using Imagynasium. You can watch the intro screens that come up in the other areas of the game, or seek further help in finding your way around the Imagynasium world. The Big Screen Projects that are created and saved from any of the areas within Imagynasium and can be arranged in any order that you wish into a continuous slide show. Complete with sounds and animations, this is the area where kids can show off their creative works upon the masses. Take-Out Stand In this area, kids can find various games and activities that can be printed off and taken into the real world when they leave. Every character from Imagynasium has different activities to choose from. Some of the top picks were: The Grocery List Game from Frida. Monda's Circle Stories Riff's Wind Chimes Roxie's Problem Finding Cave Man Dinner from Spike Conclusion: PROS: Imagynasium is a truly wonderful world of creative expression. It is nice to see a game that truly captures the interest of children and make them want to come back to play again and again. It is refreshing to see a game developed with the ability to capture the imagination of a child and encourage their creativity to develop and flourish in such a positive environment. CONS: The only negative remark that I have to make about this game is about the lack of instruction on navigating in the Imagynasium world. Until we found the Info Station, we were pretty much at a loss of knowing how to use the different areas of the game, or navigating through it. A simply remedy may have been to start the game by having a short tutorial explaining these concepts. TAG line: "Imagynasium is a free-for all creative explosion of sights and sounds" Rating: 4 out of 5 joysticks Imagynasium was reviewed by GameBoyz reader, Avatar on his: Game System Used for Review: AMD K6-2/350 MHz processor Windows 98 128 MB RAM 32x CD-ROM SoundBlaster 16 PnP Sound Card Voodoo 3 3000 Video Card (128 bit ) 16 MB SDRAM