How Imagine For a Day works

Meters and the score

Every role has four meters, each starting at 50 out of 100. For example, a CEO tracks Profit, Team, Reputation and Ideas, and a farmer tracks Harvest, Money, Land and Family. Every choice you make changes one or more meters, usually by between 3 and 20 points. A choice that helps one meter nearly always hurts another.

Meters are kept between 0 and 100. If any meter reaches zero, your day ends immediately with an early ending that is specific to that meter. If all four survive six decisions, your score is the average of the four meters at the end of the day, rounded to the nearest whole number.

How the ending is chosen

Each role has nine endings:

• Four early endings, one for each meter that can hit zero.
• Four main endings, one for each meter. If you finish the day, you receive the ending for your highest meter, which is the thing you protected best.
• One balanced ending, given when your highest and lowest meters are no more than 20 points apart and your average is 55 or more. It is the hardest ending to get.

A short phrase on the result screen, such as “Strong day” or “Legendary day”, comes from the score alone: 75 and above is Legendary, 62 to 74 is Strong, 48 to 61 is “Rough, but you survived”, and below 48 is “Barely made it”.

Stars and ranks

The result screen also shows a star rating and a rank. They are based only on the final score.

A day that ends early because a meter hit zero is capped at one star and the Rookie rank, however high the other meters were.

How situations are written

Each situation is a small, concrete problem, such as a cracked bridge, a missing shoe or a goat in the cabbages, with two or three options. Every option gives something and costs something, and each is meant to be a choice a reasonable person might make. If one option is obviously best, we rewrite the situation. The outcomes are written to be short, a little funny and never cruel.

All people, organisations and places are invented. We do not use real politicians, parties, brands, athletes, religions or public figures, and we avoid jokes at the expense of any group.

Ripples, surprises and advisors

• Ripples. A few choices have a follow-up. If you pick a specific option earlier in the day, a related situation may be added to a later slot. It happens once per ripple, and it replaces a regular situation rather than adding a seventh.
• Surprises. There is about a 45% chance that one regular situation is replaced by a surprise, a short, usually funny moment with two options. Surprises never appear as the first or the last situation.
• Advisors. Each role has two advisors. Each advisor cares about specific meters and always backs the option that gives those meters the biggest total gain. They are honest about their priorities, but they are not always right for you. At the end of the day they comment on how the meters they care about ended up.

Hot seat and the daily challenge

Hot seat gives you 20 seconds for every decision. If the time runs out, no option is chosen and you lose 6 points from every meter. That is a big penalty, so it is a challenge for experienced players.

The daily challenge picks one role and one set of situations for each calendar day, using a number generated from the date. Everyone who plays on that date gets the same day. Scores are saved on your device only, so there is no leaderboard. Comparing means sharing your result card with a friend.

Fresh situations on replay

Each role has sixteen situations and each game uses six. The site remembers, on your device only, which ones you have met. When you press “Play this role again”, it picks from the situations you have not yet seen, and only repeats some when fewer than six unseen remain. Once you have seen all sixteen, the list resets. The daily challenge ignores this list so that everyone gets the same day.

Testing and balance

Before a role is published, we play thousands of simulated games on it. A player who picks at random should end near the middle of the scale, typically between 50 and 55, and only rarely lose early. A thoughtful player, who weighs each choice and avoids dropping any meter too low, should reach the 60s or 70s. We also check that every situation has between two and three options, that effects stay within sensible limits, that every follow-up points to a real situation and that every ending can be reached. Finally, we check that a seeded day, such as the daily challenge, is identical every time it is generated.

The numbers

At the time of writing, the site contains 19 roles and 433 situations, including follow-ups and surprises.

Questions or corrections

If you spot a mistake in a situation, or think a rule is unfair, please tell us through the contact page.