A Q&A With imaginarylab, Creators Of Whirlight - No Time To Trip

It’s been a while since the last Q&A/interview type thing (Cabernet), so you can correctly assume I’ve cherry-picked this one for Whirlight – No Time To Trip – an upcoming point and click adventure from the team behind Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town, imaginarylab.

Founder, Ciro Camera, has taken some time out of their busy schedule to answer some of the questions I’ve thrown at them, so hopefully this will whet your appetite for the game and give you a slight insight behind-the-scenes…

Whirlight – No Time To Trip is imaginarylab’s latest point and click after the excellent Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town. Let’s start with a simple question: What’s the inspiration behind it?

Hi and thanks for this opportunity. Massimo and I grew up with the graphic adventures of the ’90s, which have left an indelible mark on us. After Willy, during one of the many team calls, Massimo suggested telling the story of a brilliant but clumsy inventor. I was thinking of something about time travel, while Davide, the other team member, kept proposing rather peculiar ideas ranging from cooking to concepts of quantum physics. Whirlight was practically a mix of these ideas and our background as gamers.

Are Hector or Margaret based on anyone you know?

For Whirlight, both in terms of settings and characters, we wanted to pay homage to our country, Italy. Thus, Hector and Margaret are loosely inspired by Ettore Majorana and Margherita Hack, two illustrious Italian scientists. From the former, we wanted to capture the genius, while from the latter, the free spirit and determination.

Can you tell us a little about Verice Bay, which wouldn’t necessarily be found on TripAdvisor?

With Verice Bay, we also wanted to honor two beautiful Italian cities, Venice and Verona (our hometown), hence the blend in Verice Bay. For many locations, we went directly to the site to take photos of the places that inspired us the most, which we then incorporated into the game. Even the names of the streets and squares, in this case, “calle” or “campi,” are names of real places. Who knows, someone might actually find one of these places on TripAdvisor 😉

How soon did you start working on the game after the last? Was there time for a break or a drive to move immediately on to the next?

Willy was our first title, so we had no idea if it would be well-received or not. After its release in 2020, we took a few months to understand the audience’s reactions: it must be said that the feedback we received was extremely valuable.They allowed us to understand that there were a lot of graphic adventure enthusiasts who wanted to play products with a well-developed storyline and good duration. So, after identifying the needs and finding inspiration, we spent literallymonths defining a story that would satisfy everyone. We tried to be extremely demanding with ourselves to push our limits.

If we were to look at imaginarylab’s workflow, what would we see as an overview, i.e. how many hours you work a day? Working in an office space together/solo? The creative process in summary.

We should note that we are an indie studio that is unfortunately not full-time. Each team member has a primary job, but each of us has decided to carve out time to dedicate to development. The “balance” that has allowed us to develop Whirlight so far is this: every early morning, before work, we have a one-hour briefing, including Saturdays and Sundays, to discuss various aspects of development, from gameplay dynamics to refining dialogues, etc. Then, each of us dedicates whatever time we can find, usually in the evenings and weekends, which have become new full-time working days. We also discovered that vacations are a boost for advancing the work 😉

What do you think about the current point and click revival? Is it a niche or a genre that’s here to stay? You answer this: I’m biased…

Of course, we are biased, but even though we are a small studio not working full-time, we conducted market research before diving into this project (and also Willy): although they are a niche genre, graphic adventures have never died.There have always been products that have satisfied players. Probably not high-profile titles or those that have been in the spotlight (except in a few cases), but there has always been a lot of buzz. We must consider that there is a hardcore group that has played the classics, but thanks to the introduction of new gameplay dynamics, this genre has evolved, maintaining its basic characteristics, to adapt to younger audiences. Therefore, in our opinion, it is a genre that will never disappear because there will always be an audience that wants to immerse themselves in a story, just as there will always be people who want to read a good book.

While we’re not going the auteur route, Ciro is the founder of imaginarylab, having come from a background in 3D modelling. What was the catalyst for focusing on video games, and putting aside the passion, has it been a viable transition, given the current climate of the video game industry?

The transition, from a technical standpoint, was practically painless. Massimo and Davide are programmers, so they adapted their knowledge to the Unity world. I handle 3D, so for me, it was like putting my knowledge at the service of a very demanding new client: our team 😉 In terms of feasibility, a lot has changed over the past few years: in 2020, when we released Willy, partly due to the pandemic, we noticed a strong expansion of video games, which is now followed by a more challenging period. Our situation is somewhat unique: let’s say we sacrificed speed in favor of completing the project since development is our second job. This involves a lot of sacrifices, both for us and our families, but also a kind of sustainability for the project.

For those with a penchant for tech, what type of software and hardware are you using to develop Whirlight – No Time To Trip?

The development is done in Unity with the help of the Adventure Creator plugin. This is complemented by a slew ofscripts, custom tools, and shaders developed by Massimo and Davide, allowing us to automate and speed up many processes. For the creation of assets, the process involves creating everything seen in the game (excluding Unity shaders) in Autodesk Maya. We’re talking about scenarios, characters, animations, animated cutscenes. All assets are pre-rendered and used as 2D sprites in Unity. It’s practically like creating a 2D adventure. This has the advantage that, not using real-time 3D, the game doesn’t consume too many system resources, making it accessible to almost everyone while maintaining detail and quality without compromise. Of course, the downside is represented by more work, which we are happy to do to achieve the result we have in mind.

Anyone who has played Willy Morgan will note the love for Day of the Tentacle, but what are each of the team’s picks for the point and click, and, should one of you be a madman and not pick from the genre, what’s your favourite title?

Our favorite titles are undoubtedly from the graphic adventure genre: from “Monkey Island” to “Day of The Tentacle” to “Sam & Max Hit the Road”, not to mention all other Lucas and Sierra titles. But we also love “Machinarium”, more recently “Uncharted” series. Personally I have always been a fan of the Final Fantasy saga, so there’s something not strictly point-and-click.

Which more recent point and click adventures have you enjoyed (there’s been a lot!)?

Unfortunately, there haven’t been many: between work and development, there’s not much time left to play other titles. In recent years, we have greatly enjoyed “The Wardrobe”, “Detective Gallo”, “Gibbous”, “Thimbleweed Park”, “Return to Monkey Island”. We replayed some classics like “Kathy Rain”, “Syberia 1 and 2”. We have definitely tried quite a few demos and participated in a lot of Kickstarters, which is why we have a lot of backlogs that we hope to play soon.

The preview of Whirlight – No Time To Trip only briefly touched on some of the concepts in the game, as we will be seeing a secondary playable character and a lot to do with time travel. In that short time, we saw some Dali influences in the dream sequence. What other artists influence your work?

It depends a lot on the scenario and especially on the plot: for each game environment, thorough research is done to understand what may work or not. In the demo, Dalí perfectly fit the dream, as did Andy Warhol since Hector lives in the ’60s. Let’s say that based on the plot’s evolution or specific locations, we can be inspired by some artists, but we usually try to create new environments, and the references we put in are homages or easter eggs.

…and the token questions…

If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

Personally, I would love to visit the great civilizations of the past: Egyptians, Romans, Mayans, Greeks, etc. There are a lot of things still to be revealed, and it would be nice to uncover their secrets, but perhaps, even here, Indiana Jones (both game and movie) has had its influence.

Would you consider spin-off animations – that is, Netflix et al. as a platform for storytelling?

If done well, we think they are a good way to deepen and develop a title. So we have no reservations about possible other media, indeed, they could also expand the plot by delving into those facets that were only hinted at in the game.

Would you consider stepping into different territories and trying something else – a racing game? Beat ’em up? RPG?

It could be, but we are also a bit scared by the idea of trying genres that we might not be familiar with personally.Compared to a racing game or a beat’em up, we would feel more comfortable with RPGs, but it would be extremely complex for a team like ours. Probably, it would be more in our wheelhouse to experiment with storytelling with gameplay dynamics more similar to a platformer, but we will see.

Who would play Hector and Margaret in a live-action movie?

We would like Jeff Goldblum and Rihanna.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in the gaming industry or 3D modelling/software engineering?

Massimo would be a magician, but a very poor one, Davide would be a capoeira champion, while I would be a mighty astronaut.

Without scrimping on quality, can we have the game now, like right now?

If you want to try a game with a series of bugs that could block you and some locations hand-drawn, but in the style of a 3-year-old’s drawing, then yes, but we tend to advise against it 😉