Developer and publisher imaginarylab is not new when it comes to making point-and-click adventure games. Their 2020 release Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town was a stellar release in the genre and remains a decent point-and-click adventure to this date. Whirlight – No Time to Trip is imaginarylab’s latest title which they announced earlier this year and now we finally got a chance to experience it with a press demo. We went in with high hopes because we had already played their last release and are happy to say that we were not disappointed with their latest game either. At least for the time we spent with the demo. This is our preview of Whirlight – No Time to Trip in which we help a giant blind frog and steal some keys from a deadly robot piranha.
Whirlight – No Time to Trip features the adventure of an inventor named Hector and an artist named Margeret. The game takes a brand-new direction as Hector and Margeret get entangled in time travel as they travel through time and space and explore different landscapes. The main character is Hector who stumbles upon Margeret during his time travel, and she tags along for the ride. While she is introduced to the game later, Margeret is also a playable character and Steam screenshots suggest that in certain instances, we will be playing as her only. It would have been great to see her in the demo as well but then again, some things must be left out for the full game.
Sticking true to a point-and-click game, the complete gameplay of Whirlight – No Time to Trip revolves around pointing and clicking on different items on the screen. We do not remember a time when we had to press a key on the keyboard apart from when we had to save the game. The right mouse key allows you to see all of the interactable items and objects on the screen, the left mouse key is for moving around, and clicking will allow you to interact with different objects. The middle mouse key opens up your inventory where you can see collected items, combine them, or use them in the current environment to progress in the game. In short, the gameplay is simply as classic as it can get to any traditional point-and-click game. There is nothing new here if you have been playing these games for some time.
With this being said, the environments are beautiful to look at. We only experienced a handful of these locations and one of them was a pretty generic office/town location but during one of the sequences, we were present in another timeline and the environments were just drop-dead gorgeous. The visuals and scenes are all hand-drawn which shows how much effort the developers are putting into the game and seeing these environments inside the game pulls you into it. The introductory level of the game is inside a dream, and it was the best moment of the demo for us. The level design felt like something straight out of a fiction movie especially the scene where there is a thunderstorm in the background, and we have to open a chest.
Another prominent location was a large gap between two mountains, a giant moon in the background, and a giant toad sitting on one of the mountains. After playing the demo and exploring its small number of environments, we can easily say that the level design has certainly matured when compared with its previous release. There are many more interactable items this time around, but the puzzles are still fairly straightforward. You do not have to think too much to figure out what needs to be done next. There is plenty of backtracking because you reach a blockade and then you must go back and figure out what you need to do to move ahead in the game. The puzzles work in a flow and solving one leads to the solution of another and thus you end up clearing the scene.
The demo levels only featured gameplay for Hector but considering this is a point-and-click game, I doubt there will be many changes in gameplay with Margeret apart from a character change. There is not much difference in gameplay in these games as well because the gameplay revolves around finding items, combining them, and then progressing in the game. Audio design and dialogue delivery play a vital role in these games because apart from listening to dialogue between different characters, there is not much when it comes to lore and story in these games. Apart from Hector, the demo only featured another NPC with dialogue in it. Hector has solid voice acting and keeps you entertained with dialogue lines here and there. As you click on Hector’s wacky creations, he will give you a little bit of background, and clicking on anything strange will result in a humorous one-liner from him as well.
While the demo plays well, it has its issues nonetheless and one of the most annoying ones that we encountered was a game-breaking bug if we hadn’t saved the game manually, we would have to restart the entire game again because the autosave overwrote after we glitched out. At a certain point, we had to combine a flute and a swordfish toy but having used the swordfish toy first without combining it, it just disappeared from my inventory leaving us with a useless flute. We experienced some technical issues during our preview of Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town but none of them appeared to be game-breaking. We might be looking too much into it because apart from this, I did not encounter any sort of other technical bugs or glitches. We will save the final verdict until We have the full version of the game in our hands.
The preview demo for Whirlight – No Time to Trip featured a small chunk of the full game and we definitely came out happy with it. From the hand-drawn levels to the cool animations to the decent audio design, Whirlight – No Time to Trip seems to be packing all the elements of a good point-and-click game. It is certainly on a more accessible side because the puzzles can be cleared without the need of a walkthrough and if you have aced these sorts of games previously, you will not get any problems here as well. The humor seems to be decent and the voice acting for the main character is solid. While it certainly lacks the level of design and puzzle complexity of the Monkey Island series, we can see some similarities between Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town.
This is natural because the same development team is developing the new game as well and this is great too because I loved the world design of Whirlight – No Time to Trip. The color palette and animations keep things fresh and there is always something interesting to look forward to when you arrive in a new location. The demo only offered us a gameplay time of around 1.5 hours before we completed it, but it is definitely looking great. We enjoyed playing it and we are sure that the full version will be even better and more enjoyable than this. As of now, there is no word on the title’s full release, but the Steam page has a 2025 release window. You can try out the free demo yourself and add it to your Steam wishlist if it strikes your point-and-click interest.
