Can autistic people still have imaginative play?

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I guess so. I didn't play imaginatively as young as most children, but once I was five or so years old, I started to use my imagination.

I still thought it was more fun to line up and arrange my toys, though.

The symptoms of autism vary from person to person, so I don't think a lack of imaginary play is a requirement if you meet the main diagnostic criteria. (I haven't been diagnosed yet, though, so I don't know how this is considered in practice.)

When I was a preteen I would sometimes lie in my bed and imagine I was Sleeping Beauty about to be kissed. In the Disney movie when she opens her eyes she smiles at the prince but doesn't actually say anything. I thought that was so cool. Sometimes when I got up in the morning I would imagine I was a robot coming to life like in the old Astroboy anime I watched back then, slowly waking up and taking my first steps.

I would also role play a lot with my dolls and stuffed animals (I still do sometimes). Occasionally I actually came up with some original stuff that I later made into an illustrated "book" or a handmade comic. Since I was pretty clueless about socializing with kids my age I didn't have to worry about making any huge faux pas with my toys.

Why are these "doctors" still acting like it's the 1950's? but I did read about female aspies being more into doing this, and even being misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, like I was.

When I was younger my imaginative play was mostly by myself. I would pretend that the treehouse is a space station, my house was a Mars base, the car was a space ship, and my jacket was a space suit. My imaginary would is something I came up with and pretended to be in on my own. I sometimes did it socially but not often.

I didn't make my dolls interact or do tea parties or anything like that, but I did have a pretend horse because I couldn't have a real one. I got the idea from kids who had imaginary friends.
He was a brown horse named buster and I used to walk him around the yard and comb his mane with an imaginary brush and feed him imaginary hey in my father's tool shed which became the barn.
I couldn't ride him because I couldn't sit on an imaginary horse.
When I was four the kids in the neighborhood used to play house on my porch and they always made me be the baby and all I had to do was sit there and suck my thumb because that's what I did anyway.

Thinking: What is pretend play? What is imaginary play? I´m not sure how to distinguish.

If pretend play is playing teaparty with dolls, I didn´t. If it means "cowboys and indians", I didn´t. If it is dressing up as "fine lady", I did.
If imaginary play would be playing doctor, using "mysterious" feet from moms sewingmachine, or "stone-age" with things I found in the field, I did. If I played "fantasy" imagining characters - I didn´t.

When I was two I had a cat costume at I wore and pretend to be a cat, even to go so far as to eat cat food. Does this count? Lol I even pretend to be a wolf/dog for a LONG time in my childhood.

My imagination was a big escape for me, pretending to be animals, making houses and cars for my toys, talking to all my toys. I had an imaginary friend named mummy dude, he was a 6inch rubber mummy Halloween decoration, but I wasn't a child.. I was a teenager at the time. I still have imaginary friends technically.

I don't buy the pretend play thing anymore, I think we just play differently than non-autistic kids.

I will say that I do not seem to get as involved in the online role playing as others in the discussion forum about the game.

I have actually been accused of lacking imagination and rather focusing on the mechanics of the game.

So whilst I do a lot of imaginative role playing, I seem to do it differently from NT's.

i remember scooping, making small holes in some of the school's hills and sculpting small dams from the mud. i made up small towns around it that used the imagined artificial lake for power.

damn strong dams they were. i stood on them. they stayed.

I could do it through projecting a personality (usually some exaggerated aspect of mental illness) onto a toy but I couldn't use my own body to pretend to be somebody else, that just seemed ridiculous. I don't watch films or drama serials because I can't see past the fact that it's a bunch of people pretending to be somebody else on a set.

I done imaginative play as a child, and didn't have much trouble with imaginative play with my peers either.

What I had more trouble with was games like "hide and seek" or "tag", because if I lost the game I would cry or get frustrated. But at the same time, I would get frustrated when kids cheated or horseplayed.
So I got on better playing imaginative games like "mums and dads" or "schools", etc. Girls were easier to play imaginative games with than boys. Things like climbing trees or building dens were better to play with boys.

But when I was really young (about aged 5-7), the girls in my class only wanted to play horses every playtime at school, and nothing different. I usually ended up playing on my own because playing the same game of horses every day got boring for me. I didn't want to play with boys at that age because boys went through a silly phase of thinking girls were "full of cooties".

"Creating" mysteriously magic worlds in small isolated habitats could be imaginative play, I guess.