What a lovely puzzle platformer where the main mechanic is a push-and-pull mechanic that you need to use to solve puzzles, find collectibles, finish some requests and fight a few monsters. Takes around 5h to complete and has no missable achievements.
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 5h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this achievement guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No, there is level selection
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
WHALIEN – Unexpected Guests is an awesome puzzle platformer. You’re on a spaceship in the form of a whale with a cute AI “Fin”. The AI is a bit in panic as every human has left the ship while he doesn’t feel so good… except for one guy, will he help make Fin feel better because something is going on in his stomach.
The main focus of this game is a push-and-pull mechanic with which you solve puzzles, find collectibles (aka stickers), help the springpeople that are left on the ship and fight a few enemies. I find it very interesting how with such a simple mechanic the developers have made a lot of small puzzles you have to figure out in order to progress. Sometimes I felt a bit lost but there was always something I had to do or figure out in order to progress. It didn’t feel like they repeated the solutions of puzzles, they all were quite unique.
I encountered a few bugs and the game has some stutters and a camera that sometimes pulls in one direction without a reason. I know that the development team is very small and they are hard at work with fixing bugs that players found since the release of this game (Writing this a little over 24h after the release). Most bugs were easily fixed by reloading the level and they didn’t stand in the way of enjoying this little gem.
The ending gives the option for a sequel and I really hope that one day the lovely people of Forbidden Folds will be able to make one! Maybe one where you also have to clean the ship, like how it is done in Out of Space or Haven. I would have loved to clean up the ship as well.
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This review for WHALIEN – Unexpected Guests was written on 26 January 2023, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 35 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.
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