Let’s play: Am I Nima? (Demo)

I was on Steam yesterday when I stumbled upon a game demo called Am I Nima? by HO! Games. The graphics and summary were enough to snag my interest, so I downloaded the demo.

Am I Nima is a psychological horror game in which you must convince your mom that you are her daughter. You play as the main character Nima Lee, who wakes up in quite a strange situation after an “accident”.

I found the puzzle aspects of the demo to be just as enjoyable as the plot and characters. You click items and explore while unlocking new words to help drum up memories. You can combine words to unlock new ones. These can also be used to create different dialogue options.

The gameplay of the demo was smooth as butter. The only issue I had was the screen size. It was really zoomed in when I first launched the game. Pretty sure that was something on my end, possibly. Either way, got it fixed without any other issues.

I’m not sure when the full game comes out, but I’ll keep an eye on Steam and update this when there’s a date.

SPOILER ZONE- DISENGAGE IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THE DEMO YOURSELF WITHOUT KNOWING THE FULL DETAILS.

I’ll be giving a rough and quick summary of the Demo before getting to some theories of my own. I recommend playing it if you want a more coherent explanation.

Look, I don’t care what’s going on with Nima. It can’t be as bad as what the fuck her Mom is doing in that damn basement.

So you (Nima) wake up strapped to a chair in the basement with your Mom, Anabelle Lee, standing in the corner like a menace. You don’t quite remember what’s going on, but your mom is now hesitant around you and keeps you locked in the basement.

You start with two words in the game: Nima and Stranger. You unlock more by clicking objects.

She takes you upstairs where she gives you a bowl of her crappy cooking and begins to ask you things. You and Nima find out that you almost drowned while swimming, and your mom saved you.

Personally, I don’t buy that for a minute. I’m not trusting a single word out of that woman’s mouth.

After this, she carries you back to your bedroom, and you can explore after some sleep. We find out Nima’s dad has passed (which I think the mom might have something to do with his death) and that Nima’s mom is dependent on her daughter to get things done while she works.

A good chunk of words can be unlocked and combined in this area.

I tried to read behind the scribbles on the diary but couldn’t get much out of it besides information on an older character and pills given to Nima.

Why does she have so many locks on the door? I do have to appreciate the game for making her look deeply unhinged.

You get a thought to lock her in the bathroom while she unlocks it for us, but she returns too fast to do so.

Now, this is where the demo ends for now until the full game comes out. She’ll give us several items to try to jog our memories. The first is a shark plush that we got from an aquarium trip with Nima’s dad, and the next is a fossilized rock. No matter what word we choose for the fossil will put us in conflict with Anabelle.

There’s an argument on Nima’s “responsibilities” and Anabelle’s shitty parenting. She’ll toss you in your room to sleep for the night afterward.

We’re treated with the secondary text of:

“You messed up. Pushed her buttons too much. She doesn’t love you anymore.”

Then we see how completely unhinged Nima’s mother is. We wake up with something holding us down, with Anabelle on top of us. She remarks that the anesthetics have worn off. She then lobotomizes you, ending the demo.

I have several theories from the demo. The first theory is that I believe there’s a parasite living in Nima’s brain. I don’t necessarily think it’s evil. I think the dual dialogue we get from Nemo is both her and the parasite speaking. The main dialogue comes from the parasite, and the secondary dialogue is from Nima.

This would make sense because Nima would understand her mother better than the parasite.

I also believe Anabelle put the parasite in Nima and is now using her as a lab rat. She scribbles down notes quite often. The parasite came from the fossil Nima that she found and gave to her mom. It’s the one she spent all that time down in the basement working on while Nima wasn’t allowed to see it. The whole story of Nima almost drowning was just a cover for whatever the hell the mom is doing.

We unlock words like “corpse”, “parasite”, “hubris”, “god”, and “autopsy”

I don’t think this is the first time Nima’s been majority injured, or something has happened either. We don’t get a lot of information on the dad besides that he passed. I’m not sure if it was a car accident or something, but her mom made an off comment about not losing her as well.

The demo was a blast to play, and I’m looking forward to the full game coming out soon!

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