A Short Hike meets Moby Dick in this demo for a quirky, laidback exploration sim

Brought to you by the decadent intellects behind Incredibly Fast-Paced And Very Rogue Movement Shooters, Completely Fictional Story About A City Inside A Whale is a gentle, comedic exploration game in which you steer a wind-up boat through the guts of a leviathan. It was announced this week and there’s a demo on Steam, which I think will tickle the cockles of Psychonauts 2 players and A Short Hike fans alike, though I do wish developers ln404 and akinat0 had taken their own work just a little more seriously.

It turns out the inside of a whale is rather peaceful. In the course of 15 minutes, I have not encountered any Biblical prophets or half-digested chunks of giant squid (or half-digested giant squid prophets). The game’s map is a shadowy, oceanic shantytown that, according to the Steam page, will eventually span two or three hours of placid roving and tinkering. Movement is very fiddly, in a playful way: you have to keep clicking a big brass key to wind up your ship, and you must turn the steering wheel with the mouse: there are no keyboard controls.

Quests, if you can call them that, are bestowed by the cartoon animals you find perched on docks, including twin penguin guards and officious crocodiles. They’ll mostly ask you to look for coins or grab belongings, with tasks-at-hand logged in a pleasingly chunky scrapbook. You can obtain coins as you go by popping floating litter in bins with the mouse cursor, or opening treasure chests. Coins can be spent on gate access and a map of the whale’s interior. You can also spend them on less practical commodities, such as the “useless facts” peddled by one particular critter.

As that last bit may suggest, and in case the title leaves you in any doubt, the game doesn’t half love taking the piss out of itself. Visual gags are everywhere – Loony Tunes signs, spoof tutorial NPCs, treasure chests with “don’t open” next to them. Your mileage will vary, but for me, it’s a bit of a bombardment, and a slight waste of a quirky, eldritch setting that has been crafted with a lot of care. A Short Hike – which made our list of the best open world games thanks to rather than in spite of its scale – can be similarly whimsical but it knows when to rein things in.

Still, I’m intrigued to sample the full version of (deep breath) Completely Fictional Story About A City Inside A Whale, which launches in 2024. I must admit, I have a weakness for games set inside giant animals, like the Riftworm level in Gears of War 2. There’s something about the microcosm/macrocosm interplay there that I always find thrilling. Do you have any, um, intestinal favourites to share?