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

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Game of the Year, easily. Also, people in here talking about games I actually dig and that are not only on Steam? Brilliant. :tup:

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It's on GoG too then? I don't think there's that many more services that aren't worse than Steam.

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I'm mostly enjoying the game so far, but I could definitely do without all of the self-aware adventure game jokes.

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7 minutes ago, Moosferatu said:

I'm mostly enjoying the game so far, but I could definitely do without all of the self-aware adventure game jokes.

I feel like 4th wall breaking is the worst kind of comedy 99% of the time

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The only fourth wall breaking I've encountered so far was on the second screen, in the first proper dialogue tree, but I can let that slide because it could have been intended as gentle tutorialising (about adventure game dead ends and whether I needed to save etc.). It did yank me out of a nicely atmospheric intro, though.

 

I'm hoping it won't have too many in-jokes of that sort later on - I've played plenty of adventure games that use that stuff as a crutch, or even their main source of humour.

 

So far I really like it! I have selected retro sentence bar and speech fonts, but modern verbs.

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Hearing this, and knowing Ron Gilbert's sense of humor, I'm adjusting my expectations a bit – it always seemed to me that Ron likes his meta humor.

 

If it's only the odd meta reference once and a while, though, I can live with it.

 

Edit: it's like, every other joke.

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Played it for 30mins this morning. I like the game so far, but it does annoy a bit that the double click and long press the mouse have the same function and that sometimes triggers the wrong verb because if I have chosen something else that the recommended verb, it really easily registers my one click as a double click. It seems to be a bit too sensitive in registering the clicks. I would hope there would be either long press or the double click for fast moving the character and not both.

 

Apparently they forgot the help screen from the game that has all the keyboard shortcuts, it will most likely be added in a quick patch. To me it's a bit weird that there is no credits options in the menu, so you can't look at the credits at all. I wonder will that unlock after you complete the game or is that just something they forgot?

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16 hours ago, dium said:

Edit: it's like, every other joke.

 

Okay, I've now played part of the game as

Spoiler

Delores, the aspiring computer programmer, and obviously those sort of jokes come thick and fast - MmucusFlem Games, a reference to Sierra deaths when you pick up the broken ketchup bottles, etc. It doesn't miss an opportunity for that stuff - similarly, when Ransome looks at the circus cannon, it is of course a throwaway reference to Monkey Island. I didn't really mind it, but they could have written some in-character observation or memory about the cannon, which I'd have much preferred.

 

Obviously the vast majority of people who play this will be very familiar with Monkey Island etc., but too many of those jokes and you start to alienate anyone who comes to it as an adventure game neophyte. Plus, well-earned character humour is always going to be funnier than references, even for those of who do get them. I'm not sure it's quite every other joke though - wandering the town and questioning the locals as Agent Ray, the game doesn't seem to lean into it so strongly.

 

I'm finding the puzzle design satisfying - it's fair and adventure-game-logical, without being a total breeze. So far the game feels slightly adrift from any plot, more like a series of short games. But I'm still very early in the game, and this is perhaps an inevitable side effect of introducing the playable cast one by one.

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"Every other joke" is only a little hyperbolic, imo. This game is a parody in the truest, most bare-faced sense. It's an adventure game very much about adventure games. There's plenty of obvious/overt references, and then some that are subtle by comparison. But they're everywhere.

 

With that in mind, though, I've managed to reset my expectations and I'm actually enjoying it. This certainly feels like a game built to impress old adventure gamers specifically, beyond simply the inclusion of a lot of references. There have been a lot of surprising moments, but I don't think I'd find them as surprising or fun if I weren't thinking of them in the context of all the early 90s stuff that came before it.

 

To summarize my reaction so far, Thimbleweed Park is very indulgent. But I don't mind so much personally, because I'm part of the in-group being indulged.

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Really stuck right now!  The game is giving me clear goals about what to do once I get out of the city limits, but I am five cents short of actually getting out!

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Every once in a while this game throws you into a self-contained, concentrated dose of adventure gaming.  These moments feel really good, almost like a Portal test chamber.  They show up abruptly, though, and without much connection to the main plot.  But they're really tightly-constructed!

 

I am no longer stuck like I was before, though it required me to walk around the entire town and read everything.  Now I have access to all the characters and every location (I think)!

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By the way, I do have to say that it was kind of funny that I got both a GOG key and a Steam key for Thimbleweed Park for the Kickstarter. I took both to my own use since I'm trying to migrate over to GOG full time as it develops further, but for now started the game in Steam. Was supposed to play many many hours hours already, but have had the chance only to play two hours in the past four days.

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Cory & I have been playing this together and I like it more than the Tim Schafer p&c adventures (Grim Fandango, Broken Age & Day of the Tentacle) that I've played tbh. This has been really good at avoiding the adventure game logic that these games fall into so often. So far, there have been no cat mustaches. The jokes aren't particularly funny to me, but they also don't bother me at all. I don't like the verb wheel & I don't like that there's no clear/easy way to skip past dialogue you've already seen if you talk to someone about the same thing more than once accidentally. It's been pleasant to play through and there are some well designed vaguely unsettling moments that were very effective for me.

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1 hour ago, jennegatron said:

there are some well designed vaguely unsettling moments that were very effective for me.

 

These are the best aspect of the game, in my opinion.

 

Also: I am stuck. I don't mind being stuck. I *like* being stuck, in an adventure game, actually. But nobody likes being stuck on a single thing for longer than a couple play sessions, and I'm coming up against that limit. But: what I've just described is reason #1 or #2 why adventure games died, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I've just completed the game. Thought it was all excellent, and there's a lot of it...it's been a long time since I played a new adventure game that had anywhere near this much in it.

 

I was very stuck on two occasions, both proper puzzle bottlenecks, but they were totally fair once the solutions presented themselves (one was the search for the nickel @mikemariano mentioned), so I was really glad I persevered and didn't phone the hint line. Nothing quite like cracking open a new stretch of an adventure game.

 

I do have a few misgivings. As much as the game goes out of its way to spell out each character's goals by giving everyone a 'to do' list, that actually causes more confusion when you get stuck elsewhere and keep trying to progress one particular puzzle thread, because there's little sense of what's possible in the short term. For a long time I was

 

Spoiler

trying to get Franklin out of the hotel (one of his objectives), not realising that I couldn't do any more with him until the final chapter.

 

I also think the chapter divisions are a bit arbitrary, with too many puzzles spanning them for them to mean much. 

 

Visuals were fantastic, they just missed a few tricks like not sticking to the classic resolution in every respect - the characters actually scale flawlessly as they move further away, so in a scene like this you have their tiny high-res pixels amongst the faithful big pixels of the background and interface:

 

 TP-pixels.png.a8f5697121832c265f255953706e30fb.png


I wanted them to go all blocky as they walked away! This was the only thing that didn't feel right. I loved how it looked and moved in every other way, really atmospheric background work and plenty of special animations.

 

I don't find Ransome that funny, but generally the humour raised a smile.

 

I hope they make another game soon! :tup:

 

One question, for anyone else who finished it:

Spoiler

Was the Betamax tape just another red herring? Because I had to replace the machine tube and use the voucher to get it I was sure it'd be useful at some point, e.g. another source of makeshift fingerprint tape, but it never came up. I wondered if this game has too many red herring inventory items, but actually Monkey 2 had lots of those, and I always hold that as the gold standard.

 

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11 hours ago, Simon said:

 

One question, for anyone else who finished it:

  Hide contents

Was the Betamax tape just another red herring? Because I had to replace the machine tube and use the voucher to get it I was sure it'd be useful at some point, e.g. another source of makeshift fingerprint tape, but it never came up. I wondered if this game has too many red herring inventory items, but actually Monkey 2 had lots of those, and I always hold that as the gold standard.

 

 

 

Spoiler

The betamax tape has no use in the game. However, it's a copy of "Blazing Saddles", and Delores comments on how she loved the movie, but wasn't so sure about its ending. Which is direct foreshadowing to Thimbleweed Park's own fourth wall dismantling ending.

 

Many red herrings were backer created items. They paid for it, so Ron had to make them. You can get rid of / identify red herrings easily though, because the characters will (with the exception of the glass bottle!) only throw red herrings in the dumpster.

 

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3 hours ago, mikemariano said:

Poor Sexy Riker...

 

 

  Hide contents

I have made him vomit so many times and still have no idea how to get what I want from him.

 

 

Clue for how to get past this bit -

 

Think about how you can get inside his room when he's NOT around

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Cory & I finished playing this today. Now we can start on Persona 5!

I think p&c adventure games are a genre best suited to playing with someone else. It helps so much at diffusing the frustration that comes with them.

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12 hours ago, pabosher said:

 

Clue for how to get past this bit

 

 

Thank you!

 

I beat the game!  I rushed the ending.  I shouldn't have rushed the ending.

 

People that want a Ron Gilbert-created Monkey Island 3 know they aren't going to get a tidy resolution, right?

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On 4/10/2017 at 8:16 AM, mikemariano said:

 

Thank you!

 

I beat the game!  I rushed the ending.  I shouldn't have rushed the ending.

 

People that want a Ron Gilbert-created Monkey Island 3 know they aren't going to get a tidy resolution, right?

 

I have no idea what to do next and am totally stuck.

I've got the truck battery, I've got to the point where Delores needs to get inside Chuck's tomb finally but no idea how to hit that switch inside, no idea how to charge the battery (I've tried everything in town, and the only thing I can think of is to get Franklin to zap it but i can't seem to get that idea to work) and I've got the watch all fixed and set the time clocks EXCEPT the one behind the truck. Sigh.

 

Help pls.

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18 minutes ago, pabosher said:

 

 

I have no idea what to do next and am totally stuck.

 

  Hide contents

I've got the truck battery, I've got to the point where Delores needs to get inside Chuck's tomb finally but no idea how to hit that switch inside, no idea how to charge the battery (I've tried everything in town, and the only thing I can think of is to get Franklin to zap it but i can't seem to get that idea to work) and I've got the watch all fixed and set the time clocks EXCEPT the one behind the truck. Sigh.

 

 

Help pls.

 

Hint below:

 

there's a goo source fairly near the truck, if you could find something to hold it in, you could use that to follow people without getting lost & there might be something to let you charge your battery 

 

 

Explicit solution if you're still stuck:

Delores has a trophy in her room that can hold liquid (as previously established) put some of the nuclear waste from behind the factory in the trophy. Carry that to the woods, and put it in the puddle. Exit and return. The solution is fairly obvious from there. 

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Yeah jeez i don't think I'd have got it if it weren't for your help. Thanks Jenn!!

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