A game about combining words? Alright, already seen this one. A psychological-horror game about combining words? Okay, sounds fascinating. A psychological-horror game about combining words and then using them as a tool to gain the trust of others? Well, I have to admit that a demo of Am I Nima showed me a mix of genres and mechanics which I’ve never seen before, without revealing too much of its convoluted story.
An infectious blend of word choice and navigating the moment
In Am I Nima you’re in control of Nima’s fractured mind. Trapped in a basement, you must navigate once-familiar rooms, unlocking hidden memories and piecing together the truth behind your captivity. You need to combine words together in your brain and use them to talk in order to convince your mom that you really are her daughter. You have to get her to trust you.
When the game starts, we’re practically in the dark – literally and figuratively. After waking up in a dimly lit basement, we soon discover that in order to fill up our completely blank mind with past memories we need to talk with our mother and react to somehow familiar objects. Although, the words system is not as simple as it seems.
First, we learn new terms as we explore our bedroom and inspect the items around us, we also gain some crucial words from the conversation with mom. Secondly, we need to mix old and new words in order to create concepts tied to our past and identity. There are so many possible combinations that I’m sure you’ll find something new with each playthrough, not to mention it feels pretty satisfying to do so.
Time to get your mother on your side
The third part seems the most relevant to the plot. After acquiring the words, we have to use them to answer questions. What’s the catch? Our goal is to convince our mother and gain her trust, but we have no idea how she’ll react to our answers. We got to see the consequences of letting her down at the end of the demo, however since the description says it’ll be “choices matter” game with multiple endings, I assume that our decisions with words are going to lead us to quite different outcomes in the future.
Let’s not forget about rather extravagant style of this game – everything from color palette and cutscenes to ambient and sound effects is put together skilfully to make you feel like you’re missing something. The same can be said for the plot: even though we can come up with some theories based on the concepts we learn, it’s still uncertain what happened to our character and what is our role in all of this.
For now, I encourage you to check out the demo and see for yourself, but remember that each of your answers will have grave consequences.
English (UK) 
Hrvatski