Whales tend to get a bad rep in novels for swallowing anything in their path, but instead, WHALIEN: Unexpected Guests asks what would happen if people willingly lived inside a mechanical one. The small dev team, Forbidden Folds, asks us to delve deep and explore this creature; one that’s now infested by alien creatures, called Squiddies, chasing away the human inhabitants, and the plight of an unlikely hero to clean up the mess they’ve left. Is this whale not quite the home it could be? This 3D puzzle platformer intends to find out.

On a cloud-like planet with a few floating land masses left, humanity has run out of space, but they’ve managed to find a home in engineer Whaley Wonkey’s man-made airship, which for some reason is a sentient whale named Fin. Somehow, perfect living needs are met here for generations; water, shelter, and what I consider questionable food sources. At least until the Squiddies invade. All but one human abandoned ship, Ernest Hemmingwhale, aptly named after author Ernst Hemmingway, of “The Old Man and the Sea” fame, a goofy old engineer and descendant of the AI’s creator who seeks to keep Fin in working order by removing the gunk infesting the automaton.

WHALIEN: Unexpected Guests is a 3D game with elements of platforming and puzzle solving. Ernest has gloves and other gadgets that allow him to manipulate the environment using push and pull mechanics to grab, move, and activate objects. The problem to fix is making your way to the source of Fin’s discomfort by working your way through his system to kick out the unwanted guests. Gameplay is similar to Portal, in that you use what gadgets you have at hand, and with no combat and basic puzzles, it doesn’t push the boundaries enough for a satisfying payoff.

This is a very family-friendly experience, right down to the lighthearted, almost toybox-like characters and environments. Ernest, the Spring People, resembling toy people on springs, and the invaders, called Squiddies, are quirky, cute, and dynamic. Interactions with the Squiddies will result in blobby animations, whereas the Spring People bobble around when engaged with. Environments are full of props but they act as no more than set pieces that can be moved around for no reason.

There’s so much to look at, but not enough to do with it. I would enjoy being able to take a more sandbox approach; possibly with the addition of some engineering aspects, physics, and gear puzzles. Such a fun-looking world somehow wasn’t as enjoyable as I expected it to be.

The story is shallow, which for me took away some of the substance of such a bizarre but promising concept. Ernest and Fin communicate through text bubbles and a unique language of unintelligible sounds, but I found it difficult to focus on gameplay if I needed to read the text, so I mostly ignored it. The dialogue was filled with hints and punny humour, but voice-acting would have taken it to the next level.

I didn’t take any real interest in Ernest, having little to say with very little vigour. The music, however, was upbeat, dynamic, and bubbly, with jazzy undertones, and the world beeped and squeaked as can be expected in a bizarre mechanical vessel and brought up the energy.

This adventure is forgiving, with no death or combat and frequent reloadable checkpoints. Squiddies are mischievous and obstacles need to be overcome, but my biggest challenges were an awkward camera and limited traversal capabilities. Gadgets are easy to learn with plenty of guidance from the Spring People on how to use them, but Ernest can do little more than small hops and slowly bumble around the world. I was mostly frustrated when I narrowly missed a platform, having to gradually make my way back up. The lack of complexity makes for a quick trek and takes roughly 1-2 hours to play, or around 4-5 for completionists looking to complete side activities and their sticker collection.

The team at Forbidden Folds did well to produce a well-functioning game with almost no performance or bug issues, but they could have taken it further. The concept and design were so promising, and with a little more of a push in gameplay, and maybe some co-op, I think I would have more fun. I would have liked to see what the inhabited ship looked like pre-invasion in order to see what I was setting out to save. In service of the funny puns they chucked in, I didn’t have a whale of a time, but for casual and younger gamers, it may hit the mark in fun-factor.

Family-friendly and whimsical, WHALIEN: Unexpected Guests doesn’t take itself to the heights I was hoping for. There’s so much potential and I was really hoping to get more from my efforts; The gameplay and overall design are on their way, but they could use some fixes to really hit their strides. For kids, there’s enough to keep entertained, but for older players looking for an engaging puzzle platformer, Whalien: Unexpected Guests might overstay its welcome.

Written by: Yasmin Noble