Go on, find a better-looking point and click besides Whirlight – No Time To Trip. As a gold member of the made-up Point and Click Brigade, I am ultimately going to be biased about any adventure game. We look out for our own in this one-person club. The best destination? Melee Island. Favourite garment? A white leisure suit. Go-to pastime? Playing with tentacles. Ooer…
imaginaryLab are behind this visually striking experience. The mechanics are much like their counterparts, though as it’s the modern age, we’re looking past the Scumm engine. The team behind the game are visual artists by trade, and it shows. Playing this the first time was impressive, but with my new tablet setup, I was experiencing buttery smooth frame rates and the equivalent of the transition from VHS to DVD. It’s really a work of art, and not just the characters, but the simply stunning scenery.
But you can’t play a poster and need some depth. What’s this all about? Are we here to showcase a graphics card, or have us embark on an illogical adventure? Well, Whirlight – No Time To Trip does not disappoint on the absurdity and classic archetypes. You play a mad inventor, Hector, who is evidently a genius, but his taste in Bermuda shorts and affinity for the Vespa make him as mental as a box of frogs. I can’t quite pinpoint how old he is. It’s implied he’s old, but his erratic movements and persona insinuate he’s a spunky chap, where his raspy voice says otherwise.
We start off in 1960s Italy, but before we get to soak up the sun and pour ant-free coffee, we join Hector in a Dali-esque dreamscape. This is the very same one from the demo (play it if you haven’t already), and through all the surreal combinations and setpieces, you eventually return to Hector’s lab with a mission to locate the parts to make some unknown contraption. While the settings (and timelines) are much more comprehensible than the dream sequence, the puzzle logic is simply batshit crazy.
Being the president of the newly founded Point and Click Brigade, I am an advocate of bizarre inventory systems and peculiar solutions; however, Whirlight – No Time To Trip is something else. Most mad inventors will have a notebook of ideas, plus Hector is from the 60s, so no digital stuff, and this is your pocket hintbook. Ignoring the hotspot option so you aren’t pixel hunting, his notebook will have illustrations of inventions that allude to a problem you will encounter, sketches of the locals, and an objective list. A list of objectives is great, but it’s quite tricky to decipher the how.
Quite early on, I succumbed to the ‘use everything in combination’ solution, to winging it, to a fair share of answers to some obvious problems. The latter included fetch quests for NPCs, and that process of ‘you need to do this, get the thingy, before asking so-and-so for the spatula’. This is what is fun about point and clicks: the out-of-the-box creativity and the quirky engagements with the characters that occupy these worlds. These were both present throughout, making this a lot of fun to play, though just be aware that some of the puzzle threads are long-winded and unusual – sometimes not in the sense of being a good thing.
On the flipside, Whirlight – No Time To Trip’s longevity is as good a Trojan-like product for men in that you just keep going, and there are frequent moments of it being quite hard. The distraction piece typically is just how good it looks, to the point where wandering back and forth is like in real life, where you’re taking in the ambience and thinking things through. There’s a fast travel system, though I seldom used it as I was thoroughly immersed. And, though the pacing is good, because of the unique solutions and working out what it is you need to do, it took some time until the main narrative kicked in. Forget about your developing rivalry with another scientist – what is this invention you’re making? Why are you wearing red spandex and scaring old ladies? Who the heck is this woman with this concept Vespa, and why are all the kids wearing flannel shirts, baggy jeans and have a penchant for neon? 1990-what??
Technically, Whirlight – No Time To Trip is a flagship; storywise and for entertainment value, it’s equally excellent. It has a similar impact to the studio’s last game, Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town, only the ending isn’t as abrupt, and it’s far more involved, which is saying something, as I really enjoyed that too, and the willy jokes were in abundance. This is a game for me, and if it weren’t for this being a review under embargo with excessive reminders of that, breaking the spell, I’d happily go back in time and play this again and again. Do play the demo, as you’ll know within the first 5 minutes if this will be a no-brainer if you were a fellow member of the Point and Click Brigade.
