Whirlight – No Time To Trip is a point-and-click adventure developed by the Italian team imaginarylab and published by imaginarylab in collaboration with Vsoo Games. The game was released on Steam on 14 May 2026. Although it is officially available only for Windows PC, we tested it on Steam Deck and on a PC running Arch Linux, and it runs very well on both.
An Adventure Through Time
Our adventure begins with Hector May, a quirky inventor living in Verice Bay in 1962, who is our co-protagonist. After a brief, dreamlike adventure inspires him to create a new invention, we follow this likeable character through the streets of Verice Bay in search of the components needed to build it.
We complete the mission, but the outcome of his discovery catapults us to 1990, where we meet Whirlight’s second protagonist: Margaret Harck. Together, Hector and Margaret will travel through time and space. First, they must figure out how time travel works, and then they must find a way to return to Hector’s time. In the meantime, our protagonists will be busy saving the world.
The Whirlight adventure enables us to perform the most absurd feats, such as scratching a giant racing snail, shearing a mammoth and fixing a bathroom in a bar at the edge of the universe. Defying paradoxes, our time travels will change many people’s lives, and some of the challenges we face will be the result of our past actions.
Complex Gameplay
Whirlight is a point-and-click adventure game that draws inspiration from the classics, but offers a modern interaction system. In fact, it features visible hotspots, fast travel and one-click interaction, rather than a verb list.
Compared to other games we’ve played, Whirlight offers more complex gameplay. For example, we’ll have to manage multiple characters and even the day-night cycle in some stages.
Once Hector arrives in 1990, we begin controlling Margaret as she searches for clues to help shed light on time travel. After this initial phase, we can choose which character to control and discover that NPCs respond differently depending on who we’re controlling. This adds an extra level of complexity to the puzzles, requiring more planning to solve them.
Furthermore, at a certain point in the game, some areas and interactions will only be accessible at specific times of day. Solving the puzzles at this stage will require us to explore the same areas multiple times at different times of day, going back and forth repeatedly.
Solving a puzzle isn’t just a matter of choosing the right character or the correct time of day. In fact, we often have to travel to different locations, as is typical in point-and-click games. However, in this case, an additional layer of complexity is added, requiring us to visit certain places across different periods of time.
The journey is over!
Whirlight – No Time to Trip is a well-executed point-and-click game that entertains and captivates players for around 14 hours. This is despite some bold design choices that could have made the game less playable, such as time travel and 3D graphics.
However, handling identical environments across different eras isn’t always effective, as it can make the gameplay repetitive but this didn’t happen in Whirlight. Using 3D graphics in a point-and-click game is also a bold move as it breaks away from the traditional vision of a point-and-click game with hand-drawn illustrations or pixel art.
In this case, however, we found the graphics to be well-crafted and optimised. The greater complexity of 3D graphics also comes into play in the creation of the animations, which are very fluid and well crafted. The game features a large number of different, richly detailed environments, each with various Easter eggs.
Whirlight is also fully voiced, which is well executed and enhances the game’s immersion.
Compared to the latest point-and-click games we have played, the puzzles were much more complex and difficult to solve. The complexity of the puzzles is reminiscent of games such as The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, and it shares some gameplay mechanics with the latter, particularly those related to time travel.
Overall, we were very satisfied with this title and would highly recommend it to all fans of the genre.
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