Whimside - PC Review

The Whimside key art, many different creatures are chilling on a field with the games title written in white above them.

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Whimside is a cute little creature-collecting game that lives right at the bottom of your screen, in which you can find and catch adorable creatures called Whimlings. Developed by Toadzillart and published by Future Friends Games, the game was recently released on Steam on August 7th.

A Little Piece Of Whimsy

I have been waiting for this game to release for ages. The big question now is: will it live up to my expectations and its hype?

Screenshot of Whimside sitting at the bottom of the screen. The Thumb Culture website is in the background. — Vibing.

Gameplay

In Whimside, your main objective is to collect adorable little creatures called Whimlings. Every Whimling you come across is a unique mix of different parts from different animals and mythical creatures, from their head and body to their ears and tail. It’s really fun to see what kind of cute or wild combos you will discover next, like a chameleon-bee or even a unicorn-cow-squirrel bear!

You collect Whimlings by just catching them. They don’t put up much of a fight at all! They are just happy to chill in your inventory, no questions asked. Once you catch one, its unique parts get logged in your journal, which also shows you that some parts are a lot rarer than others, some are even of legendary rarity! Talk about fancy.

To progress in the game and unlock new areas, you will need to complete objectives by bringing a Whimling with specific combinations of parts to an altar. If you don’t happen to find the perfect creature out in the wild, no worries! You can just breed two of your Whimlings together to create a new one that will randomly inherit traits from its parents. Delivering the right creature to the altar will expand your world, letting you explore brand-new biomes in which you can discover even more Whimlings with parts and colours that match the area’s theme.

Quests and Expansions

You can also take on sidequests to earn crystals, which act as this game’s currency. These quests are just like the main ones, but they only ask for parts that you have already discovered, so they are pretty easy to complete. It is a quick way to get crystals, and if a quest asks for a Whimling that is too annoying to create, you can simply cancel it and get a new one after a short cooldown.

You can spend the crystals that you earn on many different things, such as expanding your breeding pens, meaning you can either upgrade existing ones to hold more eggs or add up to two extra pens to allow for more Whimlings to breed at the same time. It is also needed for the main quests, which asks for some crystals on top of the specific Whimling to be completed. You can also buy furniture for your garden, which is a super-cute area that lets you select a few Whimlings to roam freely in, passively producing more crystals over time. You can even pet them, making them more friendly, causing them to drop even more currency.

Screenshot of Whimside's quest screen. In the main game panel at the bottom a pair of creatures is sitting in a pen. — Man I sure hope i get a cat…butterfly…thingie?

Graphics & Audio

Whimside sports a very cute, very simple pixel art style that is both colourful and easy on the eyes. The little Whimlings are absolutely adorable, and you can really tell how much work went into designing them and making all of their parts harmonize together. The game also has a neat “always on top” option as well as a function to minimize it, which makes a little character named Toadz appear in the bottom left corner of your screen. If you hover over him, he will tell you what is going on in your game, like how many eggs are waiting for you to collect them, how many Whimlings are ready to be pet, and more.

The game also lets you pick and choose what notification sounds you want it to play, with individual notification settings for all sorts of things! Like when a new egg is ready to hatch, or when a Whimling with new parts you haven’t found yet appears. The notification sound is a cute little bell ringing, and petting a Whimling makes an adorable squeaky rubber ducky sound. The music itself is a quiet, chimey sound that is very calming and fitting for the atmosphere.

Screenshot of Whimside sitting at the bottom of the screen while the Thumb Culture website is in the background. A pop-up is showing how many different creature parts the player has discovered in a certain area. — Gotta collect ’em all!

Longevity

I honestly wish that there was a bit more to the game, maybe a few more areas or late-game objectives. It took me about 20 hours of casual playtime to 100%, which isn’t a ton for a simple bottom-of-your-screen game, though for the price it’s alright. The game is a pretty heavy RNG grind, so it might take you a bit longer based on how lucky you are with breeding your Whimlings or finding legendary parts.

I really wish that the game would let me upgrade my garden further, so that I could put more decorations in it and rebuild the game’s biomes to fill with my favourite Whimlings, and I would also like some extra achievements that are maybe a bit harder to get. While the achievements that are in the game are pretty nice and do give you rewards, they aren’t really worth going for. Some only give you 100 crystals, which is basically nothing, even in the early game.

Whimside also has Twitch integration, which is a pretty cool feature. It unlocks bonuses through viewer participation, names Whimlings after your viewers, and even has a special in-game event to celebrate if you get a Hype Train! I haven’t personally experienced these since I haven’t streamed in ages, but it sounds like a perfect little game to just let run alongside your stream.

Final Thoughts

All in all, Whimside is a charming little game that is great for what it is and absolutely delivers on what it promises. The art is adorable, and the sound design is great. While it might not have a ton of content and I would love for some more late-game objectives, it is still a fun little game to have running while you are busy doing other tasks. It is currently on sale for £4.39 until August 21st, and honestly, for that price, it is absolutely worth checking out if this is your kind of genre.

All in all, I will be giving Whimside the Thumb Culture Gold Award.