Tim Burton-Inspired Adventure “Whateverland” Torments Souls on PC September 15

Whateverland, the hand-drawn, point-and-click adventure game from Caligari Games, drops into a surreal world on Windows PC via Steam, GOG, and Itch.io on Thursday, September 15, 2022. Versions on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One also aim to take control of their destiny late 2022.

Whateverland, a world where morally grey souls are banished and transformed in a darkly comical way into forms befitting their souls’ selfish desires, ends up being the perfect place for professional thief Vincent. Stranded in this weird place, Vincent must seek an escape out of a makeshift society full of people no one would ever (willingly) get a drink with alongside a newfound–and not-so-helpful–sidekick Nick.

Discover new puzzles, storylines, and endings with nonlinear progression. Branching narratives and a morality system stretch beyond the bounds of good and evil with lots of grey to play with. Vincent’s skills as a thief can help get what he needs or wants, but at a potentially steep price. Vincent’s choices lead him down different paths containing more than 20 mini-games, with not all of them discoverable on a single playthrough.

Lead a team of small bug-like creatures that spawned from burned books, called the Bookashes, each bearing different abilities in battle to score a goal before the other team in Bell and Bones, an easy-to-learn hexagonal grid strategy game that’s popular in the world of Whateverland. Thanks to the Kickstarter’s reaching its stretch goal, fans who can’t get enough of this game-within-a-game can enjoy a standalone version at a later date.

The Whateverland experience combines a number of familiar influences, including point-and-click adventure classics and the best titles from the genre’s modern revival, with entirely hand-drawn art inspired by masters of the bizarre such as Tim Burton. Experience each storyline and mini-game with fully voiced English language dialogue, told to the sound of an original jazz and polka inspired soundtrack performed and recorded by a sextet.

“We love the renaissance era of point and click adventures and want to bring back the feeling those games gave us to our audience,” said Eli Mikeladze, Narrative Designer, Producer, and Co-Founder, Caligari Games. “We’re glad we got such great support from fans of The Great Perhaps and with our Kickstarter and can’t wait to welcome them to the weird world of Whateverland.”

Whateverland releases on Thursday, September 15, 2022 for $19.99/19.99€ on Steam, GOG, and Itch.io for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux with English language voice acting and English, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (Simplified) language text with more languages to come. Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One versions will release later this year. Whateverland: Prologue is available now on Steam for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux.

For more information, please visit Caligari Games’ official website, follow Caligari Games on Facebook and Twitter, and search for #Whateverland on social media.

Author: Mark Smith
I've been an avid gamer since I stumbled upon ZORK running in my local Radio Shack in 1980. Ten years later I was working for Sierra Online. Since then I've owned nearly every game system and most of the games to go with them. Not sure if 40+ years of gaming qualifies me to write reviews, but I do it anyway.

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