Tanukitsune

Thimbleweed Park: A new adventure game from Ron Gilbert & Garry Winnick!

Recommended Posts

I feel like this is going in a very different direction to the Double Fine Adventure kickstarter, even though at first glance they seem to have a similar theme of "adventure games! woo!". Broken Age was designed around 'what if adventure games kept progressing?' whereas this is more of a nostalgia trip. That isn't to say that this won't be good, because it definitely has the potential to be. It just feels as though this is in a very different direction design-wise (possibly deliberately) to Broken Age.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also hilarious that they have a backer level for absolution of guilt for pirating adventure games.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is cool and all but the weird flat plane style with very little walking room and everyone being of the same body type Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion is for sure something I don't want to see return.

 

But, they get my negative money (debt), so thanks guys.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have been lost in the wonders of life for two years, but I mark my return to Thumbs forums just for this game.

 

I AM EXCITED, CAN YOU SEE THAT I AM EXCITED!

 

Ron Gilbert back to making adventure games with Gary Winnick! YES YES YES!!! :tup: :tup: :tup:

 

:worship:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also hilarious that they have a backer level for absolution of guilt for pirating adventure games.

That's funny. There's another one where they just send you a postcard guilt tripping you for not spending even more money.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

HELLO KOLZIG!

 

Interesting that they've kept in the push and pull verbs. Surely that's cruft that got taken out of adventure games over the years..!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But think of the puzzle possibility space available to you when you can both push AND pull things?!?!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm excited for this.  Maniac Mansion is still my favorite game, and I do think there's room for unabashed retro projects, especially when made by the same people.  This is like the Mega Man 9 of graphic adventures.

 

I take slight issue with Ron purporting that Maniac Mansion invented the verb interface for graphic adventures.  It seems to me that the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Shadowgate) did this first, even if they don't get the credit.  Ron may well have come up with the idea independently of those guys as the next logical step from King's Quest, but he didn't do it first.

 

Also, I demand they invite Ken Macklin to do the box art.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I understand and agree, in spirit, with the reductionist argument that all an adventure game needs is a catch-all "use" verb. But I can't help but miss the illusion of agency that verb choices present. I think three verbs (a la Full Throttle's "verb coin") was the sweet spot for me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If the "Fix" verb is not restored, I'm retracting my pledge (thus dooming the Kickstarter to be merely: a raging success).

 

Once again, I feel bad for poor Bill Tiller, who barely squeaked by his modest $40k goal for his (albeit bite-sized) hand-painted adventure while this product soared into six figures within the first day.  Ron and Tim have undeniable marquee value.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I understand and agree, in spirit, with the reductionist argument that all an adventure game needs is a catch-all "use" verb. But I can't help but miss the illusion of agency that verb choices present. I think three verbs (a la Full Throttle's "verb coin") was the sweet spot for me.

 

For a lot of adventure games that would be correct, but for humourous adventure games that is incorrect because a bunch of different verbs = more jokes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah but that's only in theory.  It's not like they came up with a funny line for trying to apply every inventory item to every background prop in those one-click-does-all adventures (The Dig, early Telltale stuff). 

 

Even just doing that would have resulted in some ungodly amount of written dialog and would have been exponentially more jokes along those lines than exists for any of the older, more verb-heavy adventures, which nine times out of ten just had a default line for trying something nonsensical.  Maniac Mansion in particular is a terrible example to use in favor of the more verbs equals more jokes argument.  I can count on one hand the number of unique lines that were written for when the player tried to do weird things.  (One of those few examples is trying to pick up a gravy stain.)  Incidentally, as the scripter on that game, I think David Fox is the guy responsible for those super-early examples of "rewarding" the player with special lines.

 

You'll always get as many jokes as people are willing to write.  No game has ever even attempted that sort of thing with a particularly crazy level of ambition that I'm familiar with, so discussing the potential seems pointless.  I will say I've long had a dream of being involved in an adventure game and being responsible for plugging in dialog lines into a massive spreadsheet that had every possible permutation of an object sentence represented.  To date, that mystical adventure game where you never hear some permutation of "I can't do that" remains unachieved.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Seeing the return of the LucasFilm Games artwork style reminds me of a magazine ad I saw decades ago for Club Caribe, some dial-up game I never played but looked just like Maniac Mansion.

 

...turns out it was a LucasFilm Games project called Habitat that ended up released as Club Caribe for the Commodore 64 Q-Link service.  It was an MMO before MMOs!

 

Eurogamer did a retrospective two years ago, and now a museum in Oakland is working to bring Habitat back!

 

This is really exciting.  I want Club Caribe to be my Elder Scrolls Online and Thimbleweed Park to be my Skyrim.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To date, that mystical adventure game where you never hear some permutation of "I can't do that" remains unachieved.

 

Perhaps you're talking about AAA adventure games only, but I feel we at least got close to this with the Dan and Ben games - if there was an "I can't do that" line that didn't refer to the objects by name, it was a unique one that was funnier than anything we could up with for the combination being attempted. We basically did the spreadsheet thing that you mention, it just entails lots and lots of writing, but as we didn't have wazzo graphics or voice-acting to sell it on, we did that instead.

If you do want to do some of that yourself, you could always head over to the AGS forums (although as with any dev forums, the people who want to write and design outnumber the people who are willing simply to do code and art)!

 

Regarding the verb interface, even Lucasfilm's own Labyrinth game had a rudimentary version of this, right?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Once again, I feel bad for poor Bill Tiller, who barely squeaked by his modest $40k goal for his (albeit bite-sized) hand-painted adventure while this product soared into six figures within the first day.  Ron and Tim have undeniable marquee value.

Well isn't it just the general consensus that his adventures aren't very well written and are poorly designed?

 

You know, I would love another Insecticide to come out if Larry Ahern wants to get back in the game. That game was neat besides a lot of the shooter levels.

 

Really his backgrounds are his saving grace and what he's known for, but there are other background artists up to par with better adventures with better characters at Daedalic.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I find it really hard to get excited about this project. I'm not too nostalgic about the verb interface, I find the Maniac Mansion style graphics/character design uninteresting, and dread the idea of switching between five different characters (Day of the Tentacle did it well, though, so...)*. The latter two are the main reasons why I never got too far into Maniac Mansion.
 
Still, I hope the game will be good, and I will probably pick it up eventually if that turns out to be the case.
 
 
* Plus I'm still a bit perplexed by Ron Gilbert's If I Made Another Monkey Island blog post (headache warning) where he states that he is not going to make another Monkey Island game but if he did he would "erase" The Curse of Monkey Island and beyond, etc. He does not come across as especially arrogant or anything, but I'm still confused as to the purpose of that post. Some interesting discussion about the verb interface and Kickstarter there, by the way.
 

Five - I would lose the verbs.  I love the verbs, I really do, and they would be hard to lose, but they are cruft.  It's not as scary as it sounds.  I haven't fully worked it out (not that I am working it out, but if I was working it out, which I'm not, I wouldn't have it fully worked out).  I might change my mind, but probably not.  Mmmmm... verbs.

 

Sixteen - If I used Kickstarter, there would be no fancy videos of me trying to look charming (as if I could).  No concept art or lofty promises or crazy stretch goals or ridiculous reward tiers.  It would be raw and honest.  It would be free of hype and distractions that keep me from making the best game I could. True, I wouldn't raise huge sums of money or break any records, but that's not what I want to do. I want to make a game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Plus I'm still a bit perplexed by Ron Gilbert's If I Made Another Monkey Island blog post (headache warning) where he states that he is not going to make another Monkey Island game but if he did he would "erase" The Curse of Monkey Island and beyond, etc. He does not come across as especially arrogant or anything, but I'm still confused as to the purpose of that post.

 

He says " I'm just thinking and dreaming and inviting you come along with me." I'm also guessing he gets asked all the time what his Monkey Island 3 would have been like in 1992 and what it would be like now.

And he doesn't say he would "erase" COMI, he says "All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, sorry, I did not mean ""erase"" in any the quotation sense. For some reason, my morning brain just did not find a better term (e.g. "ignore") at the time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's funny how he says in his Monkey Island blog post that

 

I would lose the verbs.  I love the verbs, I really do, and they would be hard to lose, but they are cruft.

 

..but they're still there in his KS game. Maybe he changed his mind. Or will remove them. (Or they're not actually in the game, but just in that one gif)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, he said in that post that he hadn't fully figured out how to do it and that he might change his mind.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now