The game follows the adventure of a claymation character named Klaymen as he discovers his origins and his purpose in a world made entirely out of clay.

In addition to being unique, The Neverhood aimed at being quirky and humorous, as is evident by the characters, the music, and the plot sequence.

Much of the game's background information is limited to the 'Hall Of Records' which is notorious for its length, taking several minutes to travel from one end of the hall to the other.

As Klaymen travels the Neverhood, he occasionally crosses paths with Willie, who agrees to help him in his journey, while Klogg spies on them from afar.

Two weeks later he announced at E3 that he started his own company, The Neverhood, Inc., which consisted of a number of people who worked on the Earthworm Jim game and its sequel.

[6] The game elements were shot entirely on beta versions of the Minolta RD-175, making The Neverhood the first stop-motion production to use consumer digital cameras for professional use.

[8] The game had some minor changes to the PC version such as longer loading times between rooms and the removal of The Hall of Records area.

[11][12] As official support had ceased, e.g. updates for modern OS and hardware, a fan group created new compatibility fixes in the "Neverhood restoration project" in 2013.

[16] In early 1997, that paper's Greg Miller reported that the game's "sales have been slow and [it] isn't even carried by all of the largest stores, including Target."

This came at a time when big-box stores were increasingly important for securing sales, as many specialized video game retailers had closed due to competition with these outside companies.

[16] Sales in the region had risen to 41,073 copies by April 1999, a figure that CNET Gamecenter's Marc Saltzman called "embarrassing".

[19] It also received a huge fan base in Russia and Iran as a result of the massive bootleg copying and distribution of pre-installed games on computers.

[20] A Next Generation critic was pleased with both the visual style (which he said is essentially unprecedented on PC) and the execution of the graphics, but found the game is held back by unexciting puzzles and a generally slow pace.

"[31] While The Neverhood was nominated for the Computer Game Developers Conference's "Best Animation" Spotlight Award,[32] it lost in this category to Tomb Raider.

Following the sequel, another Japanese PlayStation game set in the Neverhood universe called Klaymen Gun-Hockey was made.

Klaymen is featured as a secret fighter for the PlayStation game BoomBots, also developed by The Neverhood, Inc. On March 12, 2013, TenNapel announced that he had partnered with former Neverhood and Earthworm Jim artists/animators Ed Schofield and Mike Dietz of Pencil Test Studios to develop a "clay and stop-motion animated point and click adventure game".