We built a small arcade game called SME Quest — The AI Jungle. You play an SME owner lost in the neon streets of AI hype, dodging SaaS sharks, scam-bots and shocking invoices, trying to reach the Castle of Successful AI Implementation before your budget runs out. It is deliberately silly. The thing it is describing is not.
The jungle is the point
Every obstacle in the game is something a real business owner has told us about. The SaaS rep who leads with a free AI audit and ends with a three-year enterprise licence. The vendor selling a “blockchain LLM” that is neither. The scam-bot. The invoice that arrives at a number nobody agreed to. Touch any of them and you lose budget. Lose enough budget and the run ends with BUDGET BLOWN, which is a fair summary of a lot of first attempts at AI.
Half-way through the level there is a power-up marked IMCI ADVICE. Pick it up and you are immune to bad deals for twenty seconds. That is the whole joke, and the whole argument: the obstacles do not get easier, you just stop walking into them.
Why an SME owner is playing this on hard mode
A large company has someone whose job is to say no. A technology director who has seen the pitch before, knows what the licence really costs at renewal, and can tell the difference between a product and a demo. Most small and family businesses in Singapore have nobody in that seat. The owner takes the meetings, and the owner is also running the business.
So the jungle is not a metaphor for AI being hard. The technology is mostly fine. It is a metaphor for buying AI without anyone independent on your side — where every party in the room is paid on whether you sign, and none of them is paid on whether it works six months later.
It started life on a stand
SME Quest was built as a marketing asset for our stand at the Business Show Asia 2026. A trade-show floor gives you about four seconds to explain what you do, and “independent AI advisory” is not a phrase that stops anyone mid-stride. A cabinet-styled game does. People played it, lost budget to a SaaS shark, laughed, and then told us what their own version of that had been. Several of those conversations turned into real ones.
Like the SaaS Building Simulator before it, the whole thing is plain web technology — it runs in any browser, on a phone or a show laptop, with nothing to install.
What we would actually do about it
The power-up is a joke. The underlying offer is not: we are vendor-neutral, we take no referral fees, and we are paid by you rather than by anyone selling to you. That is the only reason our advice on what not to buy is worth anything.
In practice that looks like First Mile AI if you want AI running properly in four weeks rather than evaluated forever, or an AI Technology Director if what you actually need is that missing person in the seat — someone senior who owns the decisions and is there at renewal time. Either way it starts with a free Discovery session at your office, where we look at your business before recommending anything.
Common questions
What is SME Quest?
A short retro arcade game where you play a Singapore SME owner dodging SaaS sharks, scam-bots and surprise invoices on the way to successful AI implementation. It runs entirely in your browser, free, with nothing to install.
Why did imci build a game about buying AI?
Because it is the fastest way to explain what the experience is actually like for an owner with no independent adviser. It was built for our stand at the Business Show Asia 2026, where it did that job in a few seconds rather than a few minutes.
Is the game free to play?
Yes. It is free, needs no sign-up, and works on a phone or a computer.
What is the “IMCI advice” power-up meant to represent?
Having someone independent on your side when you are being sold to. In the game it makes you immune to bad deals for twenty seconds; in a real business it means a vendor-neutral adviser who is paid by you, not by the people selling to you.