I've been playing Thimbleweed Park on Android recently. In general I do love point and click puzzle games but my feelings on this one are very mixed.
* The writing is hit or miss
* The story is just serviceable
* Only about 20% of the jokes land for me
* The constant 4th wall breaking is just bad
And then there's the puzzles. Maybe I made a mistake in selecting hard mode at the start but it's got the worst of the genre's "what the hell" moments... And it's really long. About halfway through I started using a guide and for the majority of the latter game puzzles, there's no logic to solving them so you'd have to resort to clicking everything and with 5 playable characters, about 40 things in my inventory (most of which can be given to other characters) by the end game and 30 or more locations, there's just too much.
I'm going to finish this - probably today actually, I'm right at the end - but I'm not finishing it by feeling excited for the second one.
By contrast I replayed the broken sword games last year and while they show their age and have plenty of what the hell moments, a big difference is that I cared about the story and characters while playing. George and Nico are funny, dumb, endearing. I don't feel that way about anything or anyone in Thimbleweed Park.
I played it when it was released and mostly enjoyed it, though I can't remember what difficulty setting I picked. I bought it mostly because I like Mark Ferrari's art, but ended up completing it. Some characters and jokes were intensely annoying, especially Ransome. I did like Delores, though.
Afterwards, I revisited some LucasArts games I'd played before (Monkey Island 1 and 2), and tried my hand with some I hadn't (Fate of Atlantis, Sam'n'Max, Full Throttle and also Flight of the Amazon Queen, which isn't from LucasArts). I think what you describe is actually fairly representative of the overall LucasArts experience. Character building is limited, even the funny jokes get tiresome after you've clicked through them a fifth time, some puzzles are illogical even for games with a sillier tone (monkey wrench, anyone?), and there's often a lot of walking about, repeating conversations, and clicking randomly just to see what happens. Some of them (Thimbleweed Park, MI2) also have exceptionally poor endings.
Out of the games I played, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was the best, though I got stuck (by forgetting some object in a room outside a complex labyrinth) close to the end and didn't bother completing it. The main character is pre-established, the plot feels like an Indy movie, and I can't recall any genuinely preposterous puzzle solutions (though it was a few years ago now).
I love the Monkey Island games, they're a part of my childhood. But I mostly love them for the music and graphics, not necessarily for the puzzles or the many gags that other people always seem to find a lot funnier than I do.
The Sam and Max episodes were pretty good... partially because the episodic format forced the designers to keep things reeled in. A single 3 hour episode can't get to the point that you have a couple hundred possible solutions to the problem and nothing but brute force to resolve it.
This style of game died for a reason. I'm not saying it needs to stay dead, but I do think every entrant to the genre needs to grapple with those reasons and have an answer to them. The episodic format provided one decent answer, even if I don't necessarily love it as a monetization technique. Adventure games all tend to pass through episode-like gates anyhow because the combinatorial state space becomes overwhelming without them, but they often still carry over state from the previous phases of the game. The full clean-slate wipe of the episodes prevented that from becoming a problem.
It's an point and click adventure made by a renowned point and click designer for point and click adventure enthusiasts. Some moon logic is to be expected - I didn't find it to be particularly bad in this game. I think its OK to have games that are targeted at veterans of a certain genre.
The 4th wall breaking was lame though, especially the ending.
> there's no logic to solving them so you'd have to resort to clicking everything and with 5 playable characters
Are multiple/simultaneous playable characters a common feature of adventure game design from LucasArts alum? I played Broken Age and thought the idea was novel, but recently played through Day of the Tentacle for the first time and thought the mechanic made things too complicated. So many people say that adventure games are nostalgic, but the ones I played growing up were Kings Quest 6 and Myst (games with only one playable character). These other multiple character adventure games are nowhere near enjoyable for me.
And honestly the Lucas Arts puzzles were serviceable (their philosophy was always "you can't go wrong" (with very obvious but little exceptions), the Sierra "logic" of fucking you silently in the middle of the game was just tiring. Nobody got time for that
I gave up half way through. There was a lack of direction (for me) and too many permutations of clicks, characters, items and locations. The humour was ok, the story I was willing to give a chance. But I didn't want to resort to a walk through so I just kind of petered out.
I would have preferred the same team working on a new IP. Thimbleweed Park 1 has possibly the worst ending of a game, ever. Just an endless series of being told that I am a big dummy for having suspended my disbelief. I see no way of believably returning to that world without the retcon of a lifetime.
I'm guessing, given they're relying on private financing, the ability to reuse assets from TP1 is the major reason to make it a sequel instead of a new IP.
Personally I liked TP1 a lot for the most part, but I agree that the ending was a horrible misstep. I'm not adverse to metafiction, and this is Gilbert after all, that's kind of his jam, but the sheer nihilism of it all left a horrible taste in the mouth. Ironically, for someone who cares so deeply about game design, it felt like an ending entirely borne of Gilbert and his fellow designers pleasing themselves, instead of thinking about how it would feel for the player.
That said, I'm still glad there's going to be a sequel. Hopefully it has more of what I liked and less of what I didn't.
Yes, the ending was kind of lame. Worse, it has been done before, again by Ron Gilbert. It is practically a rehash of the Monkey Island 2 ending, which got us nowhere in the long run.
If you every played the first two Monkey Island games, and understand the lore behind that, then the ending is pretty good. Thimbleweed park, in many way, was a spiritual successor to Monkey Island 2 that Gilbert couldn't make for IP reasons back in the day. With at in mind, I enjoyed the ending. That said, Monkey Island 2 got a lot of criticism for its ending too...
Oh and if you really love that dumb, sophomoric ending, you can also get Return to Monkey Island, which is yet another game Gilbert ruined with this tired trope.
And that's why Curse of Monkey Island is and will always remain the best MI game.
I found Thimbleweed Park 1 very difficult. The puzzles were too hard. I didn't complete it. I tried to play it with my girlfriend, I thought it would be a nice game to work together to play/solve. It stumped both of us. No fun.
Steam has a CLI that installs games. I’ve been meaning to use it to install each of my games and archive their installation for future offline use.
That’s not as convenient as an easy-to-download offline installer, certainly, but seems workable in theory. Maybe I’m unaware of limitation(s) to this approach?
SteamCMD doesn't strip Steam DRM - even with files backed up (which the Steam GUI will do, no need for SteamCMD), you wont be able to use them without an internet connection and authenticating with Steam every now and then.
GOG's bundles are offline and DRM free. You could store them on a disk, and 30 years from now reinstall and play on an airgapped computer with no authentication required.
Great news! Thimbleweed Park is a lovely game. I played it with my children and manage to recreate the atmosphere of those evenings in 1990, spent in front of a Commodore Amiga 500 running Zak McKraken and Maniac Mansion.
Yeah, I loved it, too. Not quite on the level of the first two Monkey Island games, but still a great experience. One of the few games I actually finished in the last bunch of years.
I think the time between the original and this will work out well for me to be excited to play a sequel.
As someone who didn’t play many of the point and click adventures growing up, thimbleweed park was a lot of fun. I also like the genre more than visual novels. I kind of felt like the dialogue was supposed to be cheesy so I just rolled with it. Were some of the things a little frustrating? Yea, but I think there is a lot of life left in this genre and I’m sure Ron will make some improvements. I can’t wait to play the next one.
The final scene of TP1; the one where they show the rising sun over a hill, that felt so at home for me. It was the only reason I played the game, to see that scene. Something about the colors reminded me of my childhood.
Of course I could just see it on youtube or a screenshot but I wanted it to feel natural, I wanted the story and characters to take me to that hill scene. That’s all I cared about.
Hmm I don't remember completing the first and other than finding the phone amusing I don't remember much else about it. Will await reviews once done but if anyone hasn't played The drifter yet that is worth checking out
After how he basically gave the middle finger to fans waiting 100 years for the "real" ending to Monkey Island 2, my reaction is
meh -_-
Though Thimbleweed Park 1 was awesome in every way
I wish/hope someone else would take up the mantle of continuing the -spirit- of Monkey Island and make a new franchise with a similar rename: call it Ape Archipelago or something :)
Even though Monkey Island now has a real (i.e. canonical) ending, it sucks. I prefer the original continuation of MI3 to the 25-years-late official, canonical sequel
I've been playing Thimbleweed Park on Android recently. In general I do love point and click puzzle games but my feelings on this one are very mixed.
* The writing is hit or miss
* The story is just serviceable
* Only about 20% of the jokes land for me
* The constant 4th wall breaking is just bad
And then there's the puzzles. Maybe I made a mistake in selecting hard mode at the start but it's got the worst of the genre's "what the hell" moments... And it's really long. About halfway through I started using a guide and for the majority of the latter game puzzles, there's no logic to solving them so you'd have to resort to clicking everything and with 5 playable characters, about 40 things in my inventory (most of which can be given to other characters) by the end game and 30 or more locations, there's just too much.
I'm going to finish this - probably today actually, I'm right at the end - but I'm not finishing it by feeling excited for the second one.
By contrast I replayed the broken sword games last year and while they show their age and have plenty of what the hell moments, a big difference is that I cared about the story and characters while playing. George and Nico are funny, dumb, endearing. I don't feel that way about anything or anyone in Thimbleweed Park.
I played it when it was released and mostly enjoyed it, though I can't remember what difficulty setting I picked. I bought it mostly because I like Mark Ferrari's art, but ended up completing it. Some characters and jokes were intensely annoying, especially Ransome. I did like Delores, though.
Afterwards, I revisited some LucasArts games I'd played before (Monkey Island 1 and 2), and tried my hand with some I hadn't (Fate of Atlantis, Sam'n'Max, Full Throttle and also Flight of the Amazon Queen, which isn't from LucasArts). I think what you describe is actually fairly representative of the overall LucasArts experience. Character building is limited, even the funny jokes get tiresome after you've clicked through them a fifth time, some puzzles are illogical even for games with a sillier tone (monkey wrench, anyone?), and there's often a lot of walking about, repeating conversations, and clicking randomly just to see what happens. Some of them (Thimbleweed Park, MI2) also have exceptionally poor endings.
Out of the games I played, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was the best, though I got stuck (by forgetting some object in a room outside a complex labyrinth) close to the end and didn't bother completing it. The main character is pre-established, the plot feels like an Indy movie, and I can't recall any genuinely preposterous puzzle solutions (though it was a few years ago now).
I love the Monkey Island games, they're a part of my childhood. But I mostly love them for the music and graphics, not necessarily for the puzzles or the many gags that other people always seem to find a lot funnier than I do.
The Sam and Max episodes were pretty good... partially because the episodic format forced the designers to keep things reeled in. A single 3 hour episode can't get to the point that you have a couple hundred possible solutions to the problem and nothing but brute force to resolve it.
This style of game died for a reason. I'm not saying it needs to stay dead, but I do think every entrant to the genre needs to grapple with those reasons and have an answer to them. The episodic format provided one decent answer, even if I don't necessarily love it as a monetization technique. Adventure games all tend to pass through episode-like gates anyhow because the combinatorial state space becomes overwhelming without them, but they often still carry over state from the previous phases of the game. The full clean-slate wipe of the episodes prevented that from becoming a problem.
It's an point and click adventure made by a renowned point and click designer for point and click adventure enthusiasts. Some moon logic is to be expected - I didn't find it to be particularly bad in this game. I think its OK to have games that are targeted at veterans of a certain genre.
The 4th wall breaking was lame though, especially the ending.
> there's no logic to solving them so you'd have to resort to clicking everything and with 5 playable characters
Are multiple/simultaneous playable characters a common feature of adventure game design from LucasArts alum? I played Broken Age and thought the idea was novel, but recently played through Day of the Tentacle for the first time and thought the mechanic made things too complicated. So many people say that adventure games are nostalgic, but the ones I played growing up were Kings Quest 6 and Myst (games with only one playable character). These other multiple character adventure games are nowhere near enjoyable for me.
And honestly the Lucas Arts puzzles were serviceable (their philosophy was always "you can't go wrong" (with very obvious but little exceptions), the Sierra "logic" of fucking you silently in the middle of the game was just tiring. Nobody got time for that
> Only about 20% of the jokes land for me
I found the game so intensely unfunny (and there are few things I am selfishly rooting more for in life than another great point and click adventure)
Did you like the King's Quest games?
I gave up half way through. There was a lack of direction (for me) and too many permutations of clicks, characters, items and locations. The humour was ok, the story I was willing to give a chance. But I didn't want to resort to a walk through so I just kind of petered out.
I found the puzzles fair enough, but my impressions about writing and characters match yours.
I suspect that while Ron Gilbert is great at what he does, Tim Schafer was always the funnier writer of the Monkey Island trio...
I wonder did you enjoy the Monkey Island games. I really loved Delores and Ransome particularly in TWP.
I would have preferred the same team working on a new IP. Thimbleweed Park 1 has possibly the worst ending of a game, ever. Just an endless series of being told that I am a big dummy for having suspended my disbelief. I see no way of believably returning to that world without the retcon of a lifetime.
I'm guessing, given they're relying on private financing, the ability to reuse assets from TP1 is the major reason to make it a sequel instead of a new IP.
Personally I liked TP1 a lot for the most part, but I agree that the ending was a horrible misstep. I'm not adverse to metafiction, and this is Gilbert after all, that's kind of his jam, but the sheer nihilism of it all left a horrible taste in the mouth. Ironically, for someone who cares so deeply about game design, it felt like an ending entirely borne of Gilbert and his fellow designers pleasing themselves, instead of thinking about how it would feel for the player.
That said, I'm still glad there's going to be a sequel. Hopefully it has more of what I liked and less of what I didn't.
Yes, the ending was kind of lame. Worse, it has been done before, again by Ron Gilbert. It is practically a rehash of the Monkey Island 2 ending, which got us nowhere in the long run.
I thought it was particularly amusing because it was such a callback to MI2.
If you every played the first two Monkey Island games, and understand the lore behind that, then the ending is pretty good. Thimbleweed park, in many way, was a spiritual successor to Monkey Island 2 that Gilbert couldn't make for IP reasons back in the day. With at in mind, I enjoyed the ending. That said, Monkey Island 2 got a lot of criticism for its ending too...
Oh and if you really love that dumb, sophomoric ending, you can also get Return to Monkey Island, which is yet another game Gilbert ruined with this tired trope.
And that's why Curse of Monkey Island is and will always remain the best MI game.
I found Thimbleweed Park 1 very difficult. The puzzles were too hard. I didn't complete it. I tried to play it with my girlfriend, I thought it would be a nice game to work together to play/solve. It stumped both of us. No fun.
> P.P.P.S There will be a GOG version.
Very good news. GOG provides offline installers so you can always backup, install, and play your games forever.
Steam has a CLI that installs games. I’ve been meaning to use it to install each of my games and archive their installation for future offline use.
That’s not as convenient as an easy-to-download offline installer, certainly, but seems workable in theory. Maybe I’m unaware of limitation(s) to this approach?
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
SteamCMD doesn't strip Steam DRM - even with files backed up (which the Steam GUI will do, no need for SteamCMD), you wont be able to use them without an internet connection and authenticating with Steam every now and then.
GOG's bundles are offline and DRM free. You could store them on a disk, and 30 years from now reinstall and play on an airgapped computer with no authentication required.
Great news! Thimbleweed Park is a lovely game. I played it with my children and manage to recreate the atmosphere of those evenings in 1990, spent in front of a Commodore Amiga 500 running Zak McKraken and Maniac Mansion.
Yeah, I loved it, too. Not quite on the level of the first two Monkey Island games, but still a great experience. One of the few games I actually finished in the last bunch of years.
I think the time between the original and this will work out well for me to be excited to play a sequel.
As someone who didn’t play many of the point and click adventures growing up, thimbleweed park was a lot of fun. I also like the genre more than visual novels. I kind of felt like the dialogue was supposed to be cheesy so I just rolled with it. Were some of the things a little frustrating? Yea, but I think there is a lot of life left in this genre and I’m sure Ron will make some improvements. I can’t wait to play the next one.
Loved the first part. Can't wait to play it. Didn't know there was an iOS Version for the first one, time to replay that on my phone on a plane :D
I had a weird relationship with the first game.
The final scene of TP1; the one where they show the rising sun over a hill, that felt so at home for me. It was the only reason I played the game, to see that scene. Something about the colors reminded me of my childhood.
Of course I could just see it on youtube or a screenshot but I wanted it to feel natural, I wanted the story and characters to take me to that hill scene. That’s all I cared about.
Please let it not be meta. Please oh please oh please.
Thimbleweek Park 1 was nothing but meta.
Return to Monkey Island was corpo art and meta. "The real treasure was the friends you made along the way, computer game player". Thanks Ron.
I've forgotten the ending of The Cave, it was probably meta too, but at least it had some good slapstick.
I gave up the belief he could abstain from that after he ruined Return.
Hmm I don't remember completing the first and other than finding the phone amusing I don't remember much else about it. Will await reviews once done but if anyone hasn't played The drifter yet that is worth checking out
After how he basically gave the middle finger to fans waiting 100 years for the "real" ending to Monkey Island 2, my reaction is
meh -_-
Though Thimbleweed Park 1 was awesome in every way
I wish/hope someone else would take up the mantle of continuing the -spirit- of Monkey Island and make a new franchise with a similar rename: call it Ape Archipelago or something :)
Even though Monkey Island now has a real (i.e. canonical) ending, it sucks. I prefer the original continuation of MI3 to the 25-years-late official, canonical sequel
> We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an orange.
> My skills with a sword are highly venerated!
> Too bad they're all fabricated.
I pretty much saw the ending an effort to put the story to end and move on after all the years of speculation.