Queue entrance for an adorable, light, and relaxing time: this is Whipseey and the Lost Atlas. Developed by Daniel Ramirez and published by Blowfish Studios, this arcade-inspired indie game is full of adventure and fantasy.
To start off, Whipseey and the Lost Atlas gives you a fully visual backstory: you were once a boy, and by some twist of fate and magic, you got in trouble for opening a book and now have been transformed into a creature, exiled to a mysterious world to find a way back into his true form.
Simple and effective, the premise of Whipseey and the Lost Atlas gives you just enough information to understand the motivation of our hero Whipseey, but does not last too long to make you bored with backstory.
Immediately thrust into trying to return to your true form, Whipseey swings into action (quite literally, at times) to work his way through the kingdom and save himself. The controls of the game are elementary, with the two essential moves being jump and attack, which is a whip attack (hence his name). In your lively, wonderfully colored, foreign world, Whipsee makes his way through each level. Enemies range from electric woodland creatures, fire-spitting frogs, jellies, and many others that are introduced at each level.
Each level culminates in a boss fight. I shall only spoil the first foe, to keep the excitement of reveals intact for anyone that chooses to play Whipseey and the Lost Atlas.
While Whipseey and the Lost Atlas is an enjoyable pastime, there were moments the uncomplicated elements of the game made me feel like racecar driving circles around a snail. So simple is the concept of this game, I could speed run through levels without much effort and thought and reach the final boss relatively unscathed. Granted, making Whipseey and the Lost Atlas any more complex would detract from the charm Whipseey and the Lost Atlas has, so I didn’t really mind.
Furthermore, as I continued to play, I began to question the inspiration for this game, or at least where similarities can be drawn. To put it plainly, Whipseey and the Lost Atlas could be considered a mellowed down version of a Mario Bros game. You travel from world to world (in this case, different sections of one world), have a few moves at your disposal, make your way to a castle, move from stage to stage through doors just like in Bowser’s castle, and encounter enemies like this, that look almost exactly like Spiny:
Here is a photo of Spiny, just for comparison:
I personally think the resemblance is uncanny. But maybe it’s just me. (Note, these two above images are not mine; all other screenshots are from my gameplay.)
On the gameplay side of things, with just primitive mechanics there is not much to critique on that front. Yet the whip action could be developed slightly better, as the jump-whip combo is slightly delayed, making the leaps for swings slightly difficult to time. Thorn hit boxes are also larger than I assumed, making for some unfortunate premature deaths on my end, but that is easy to adapt to. You are given 5 lives per stage with the opportunity to earn more with the collection of coins, but the swiftness of death takes those away from you if you are not skilled enough to navigate the stages. You don’t have any checkpoints either, so if you run out (of ALL lives, you have checkpoints for each single life) you must go through the entire stage again. While frustrating when you reach the boss and fall to their superiority, there is not much to do except be a bit more careful when slipping jumping over flaming balls or swimming past spikes and avoiding electric shocks
Furthermore, this Whipseey and the Lost Atlas is very quick. After just beating the first level, I was told I was already 20% (that’s one fifth!) of the way done with the game. Here is my location on the map, just to put this into perspective:
This serves in Whipseey and the Lost Atlas’s favor, as if it took any longer, the simplistic aspect might catch up and cause the game to become too boring. The music does help the overall experience, adding to the arcade-esque atmosphere.
In conclusion, Whipseey and the Lost Atlas is a fun, quick game with a cute protagonist and a worthy cause. Some aspects might fall short, but the reach of the game is not to achieve gamer perfection: it’s to have an entertaining time. And Whipseey and the Lost Atlas accomplishes just that.
End score: 7/10
Check Out the Whipseey and the Lost Atlas Trailer:
PlayStation 4 Review
I'm Zepora, a junior at UC Berkeley studying Economics. I grew up attached to my Game Boy playing the Pokémon games, but now I turn to my consoles as break from school work when I'm not busy with lacrosse. I prefer RPG's with a some action, such as Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed (which is my favorite franchise) but am also known to play Super Smash Bros until 3am with my friends.
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