Kickstarter Project of the Week: Whateverland
For this week’s Switch Kickstarter Project of the Week, we will be looking at Caligari Games’ Whateverland. The game is slated to release in December 2020 on PC (via Steam and gog.com) and Nintendo Switch port.
Here’s the overview:
Whateverland is a hand-painted point-n-click adventure game with a branching dialogue system, non-linear gameplay, various endings, and unique in-game turn-based strategy sports simulator. And a lot of hyphens, apparently.
Have you ever wondered what happens to people who have casually pissed off a mighty witch? The protagonist of our game Vincent was lucky (if you can call it luck, that is) to find out what becomes of those who vanished into thin air, disappeared without a trace, or simply went missing under some very mysterious circumstances. An engineer by profession and a thief by trade, Vincent decides to steal a precious necklace from the mansion of a lonely old woman named Beatrice. At first glance, the task seems like no sweat, especially for a professional, but as you may have guessed, Beatrice turns out to be a witch and a vindictive one at that.
A kind of witch that you should never anger. Not even a little bit. No exceptions! Without giving it much thought, Beatrice sends our hero to a parallel world where people are compelled to languish indefinitely, reflecting on their life choices. The world bears a proud and bizarrely accurate name – Whateverland.
Right on arrival, Vincent meets his future sidekick – Nick, who assures the hero that getting out of this crazy place is hard, yet not impossible. All they have to do is find the spell that summons Beatrice, which was divided into seven pieces by the first and clearly not the most friendly inhabitants of Whateverland a couple of eternities ago. The players will have to get acquainted with a variety of different characters, while Vincent and Nick face many obstacles on their journey.
They will have to reconcile quarreling sisters, save a Russian aristocrat from the heat, give an obscure tattoo to a mermaid, arrange a date for people who don’t speak the same language (literally), co-write a novel, prepare top-notch ramen, defeat hostile communists and in between all of that learn to play Bell&Bones, Whateverland’s finest and most popular board game.
Point and click adventure games can certainly fall into a repetitive pattern, but Whateverland appears to want to disrupt that repetition with its non-linear gameplay. Not only does this add replayability, but it also adds consequence and impact to the decisions you make. In addition, with Whateverland‘s focus on adding mini-games in between the tried and true point and click gameplay, the game promises variety alongside a quirky personality.
Garlic requires €16,700 and it is currently sitting at £9,198.19 after 248 backers with 24 days remaining. If you’d like to support the development of this game to help it come to Nintendo Switch, click the link below to visit the Kickstarter page.
Thank you to our $5 and up Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
- Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out!)
- Belinda Cubitt