Whateverland test – It’s nice to win from here

“Stealing is shameful, but useful” – or is this written for the run? I got confused. In any case, Vincent probably also knows the former version of the saying, because he is a thief by profession, and also of the better kind. The last time, however, he bet on the wrong horse, when he tried to ride a collar from the home of an elegant lady. He had already put his paw on the door when suddenly the owner appeared. It turned out that he managed to hook a mustache with a hundreds-year-old witch, and that the punishment for a crime can be worse than the police serving justice.

Our hero ends up in a very exclusive prison, in the land of Whateverland, which is a kind of private prison, where the banya named Beatrice sends those who turn against him into captivity, and from which it is quite difficult to escape. I would say it would be practically impossible, if it weren’t for the game’s story, that we would try anyway. For this, the witch would have to be summoned, for which an old parchment would have to be obtained, which carries the secret spell. The matter is considered a particularly tough nut to crack because the document is split into several parts and each one is treasured by a peculiar inhabitant of Whateverland. Since there is no money in this world, everyone expects favors from others.

So the task is given: we will have to fulfill all kinds of weirder and weirder wishes or requests, but luckily (?) we will also get a partner to fulfill these noble tasks. In addition, Nick, the ghost, who can be freed from the captivity of a closet in a garbage dump as soon as we arrive. Yes, Whateverland is a point-and-click adventure game blessed with very pleasant, cartoonish, hand-drawn 2D graphics, and altar characters and humor. So I wouldn’t say the gameplay itself is very special (inventory, item use, dialogs and mini-games are the way to go here too), but there are one or two twists.

The first is that we can basically adopt two types of behavior: either we will be straightforward and honest with everyone, or we will steal from them. Since the individual solutions are quite different, this can even double the basically 4-5 hour adventure, since there is still interesting content even after playing through the second time. What makes the playing time even longer is the local, strange board game called Bell & Bones, which is played by almost every resident here. We will definitely have to play a party for the pieces of parchment, unless we collect them skillfully in the various locations, because with the red balls of yarn we can even skip these obligations and come out as the winner right away (this was to prevent someone’s tooth for turn-based strategic fun).

And that’s pretty much what Whateverland would be. Fortunately, the story is quite unique and imaginative, the dubbing is excellent (which is very important), and the choices that appear in each task give you the feeling of freedom, as well as the fact that, wandering around the map, it is completely up to us in which order to reach the end result. What you can get a little into is the control (but not the method itself, but the fact that in some locations it is not clear where to find the exit), as well as their operation, which caused a headache for me in a couple of minigames.

Basically, however, we cannot talk about a difficult game in the case of Whateverland, so all adventure game fans who were not tempted by the release of the PC version last fall and waited for the release of the console versions should take the plunge.

The test copy was provided by the game publisher.