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

[Kolzig]

PS4 port incoming according to PEGI.

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/global_id/505/?searchString=Thimbleweed+park

[Kolzig]

 

Switch version coming up as well 

[Nappi]

I decided to finally give this game a try. It feels pretty weird to play an adventure game this "traditional" that I have not beaten several times already.

 

The graphics look much better in motion than as still images. Still not a big fan of the art style for the characters, though. I think using self-contained vignettes to tell parts of the story is a good idea. The gameplay feels surprisingly good, and I like how speedy everything is. I still don't like the verb system, but whatever, I guess - for better or worse - this is supposed to be a nostalgia trip, right.

 

Before I started playing the game, I was worried that the setting would be very bleak and there wouldn't be much room for humor in this game. Having played a couple of hours, I'm praying for the jokes to go away. So far, there have been a couple of really cool atmospheric parts crammed between some of the absolute worst 4th wall breaking / meta humor I have ever witnessed in any media. I'm not sure which would be worse: that Gilbert actually thought this stuff was funny, or that he thought it would be good to undermine the (so far quite interesting) story by inserting a bunch of jokes he knew were bad (and definitely not in a "so bad they are actually good" way). I very nearly stopped playing when one of the characters said "This cut-scenes is starting to get long" or whatever it was.

[Nappi]

I finished the game. The puzzles were quite good, I think. The only times I got stuck was for a period of time was when I simply couldn't find an item that was required to solve the actual puzzle. For example, I knew I needed gloves to pick berries, but had no way of knowing that I had to talk to a specific person to obtain tohose (as I had already confirmed that I need to gather the berries myself by discussing with someone else).

 

I feel that the middle portion of the game was better in terms of the 4th wall breaking stuff, but holy shit was the ending not for me.

When the game told me that I have to consult a Kickstarter video to solve the final puzzle, I wished that games still came on physical media so that I could throw this game out of the window. Fucking barf..

[Erkki]

So this is almost the only game I've played this year, at least from start to finish. Have to agree with Nappi's criticism: it wasn't funny (most of the time). I think the writing overall was somewhat weak. Most of the game was kind of aimless wondering, often times you picked up items for puzzles that were way in the future, and since you had 5 characters you never knew exactly when you were bottlenecked by one of them. And a few times I got not only into the mode on "try everything on everything", but even "try giving everything to every character and make them try everything on everything". The one part I was stuck in was

 

the stupid miniature tools, which I basically had the right idea for, but you had to do a very specific thing with the ghost to solve it, and I didn't think of *exactly that* thing.

I had to call the hint line then and of course after that I called it again - that's usually the way it goes - when I just didn't realize I had to go to a very specific place and do something there, even though that location was never explicitly hinted AFAIK.

 

The ending was also rather disappointing to me, although making the closure for some characters optional was maybe not the best idea, since it meant I went back and did it again - what use is that? I wish they had focused on better writing and forgot about the 1000+ book library and phonebook, which were kind of cool, but unnecessary.

[Jake]

I really liked Thimbleweed Park. I liked it a ton. I don't know about the ending, it wasn't what I was expecting and not my favorite but it is also not out of line with this crew of developers.

 

I smirked at the goofy audacity of it, and liked wandering through the old art, but really missed the characters once it was over, and wished they'd all had more time to sink their teeth into what they came to Thimbleweed for in the first place. I didn't mind having the rug pulled out from under me as the player, but I was frustrated to have the same thing happen to the characters of the story.

(and yes I completed all of their endings, but they felt hollow, which I'm sure was the point at least in part... But that nihilistic "it doesn't matter, it's nothing" feeling doesn't sit super well given how much the earlier game was a very effective reminder of what a strong, genuine hold a world created by this team can have on a player.

 

 

That said, I was totally captivated by the middle of the game, in a way I haven't been by a graphic adventure in ages and ages. It hit the sweet spot for me, where I felt like I could progress at my own pace, the world was full of possibility, I always had someone else's story to switch to, and the cutaways and weird stylistic asides felt very confident and intriguing. It felt compelling and moody in a way I wasn't expecting (and I felt it through the jokes which were occasionally cheesy). I played on Switch and "annoying in jokes" were off in the settings menu by default, and I left them off. I figured (I think correctly) that the game could stand on its own without them. I also made liberal use of the hint line and was thankful it's there and integrated right into the game. 

[graddy]

Are the hints somewhat subtle and don't just spell it out for you?

 

Honestly that might confirm a purchase from me. One of my complaints with most adventure games is my poor self control after my first time giving in to the ol' walkthrough lookup. 

[Jake]

You have to dial a number on a phone in world and it gives you a general hint first. Then you have to call back for a more specific hint, and usually there are 3 layers of hint before it spells it out. It's pretty aware of the puzzles you're on and hides future pieces from you. 

[unimural]

I liked it, and parts of it I liked a lot. I had somehow thought the game was more Twin Peaks-y or serious. I'm not quite sure what I think of the humour. A lot of it was really bad and the MMucasFlem references felt a bit too much. I did become quite numb to both though.

 

On the other hand, I did like the story and the writing. I do wish the game had taken the characters a bit more seriously. I suspect if the game had been more about the characters and less about the player I would have liked it a fair bit more.

 

Puzzles were fun. I used the hint line three times (I think), and I liked the implementation. I did have one instance where I thought I had tried something, but had probably misclicked, and thus ignore the correct solution.

[Erkki]

I think I was overstating it when I said I found it not funny - I did actually like some of the jokes. But yes, there were some really dumb references that it could have done without. I don't remember if I had turned on some kind of in-jokes switch. And I also should say that yep, the hint line was good, and in general, Thimbleweed Park has one of the best uses of in-game telephones ever.

[CaptainFish]

I was figuring out what to get during the steam sale and randomly came across this and remembered that I really wanted to play it.

 

I really enjoyed a lot of the game. Especially the light feeling of danger and tension in the first few chapters. The self-contained  single character stories were really great, and a good way to switch up the scale of the possibility space from the entire city to a few rooms. Also, the characters came across very strongly, especially the two agents. They really struck me when they were introduced. I found myself wishing there was more back and forth between them as you accomplish goals (and more notes for flavour). 

 

Being able to split tasks across characters and locations felt extremely good, and I really enjoyed the puzzles that required teamwork. The traversal was very snappy as well. The only bit that bugged me was waiting for the elevator, but having it move around in real-time was impressive.

As for the ending

Spoiler

 

having it go so far into "whoa this is a game whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" was disappointing. I was pretty much fine with the light fourth wall humour, although the meta stuff that was played straight added a really nice sense of weirdness to the game. When Ray says the body is becoming pixelated, without any explanation it worked well for me. But then they do pile it on quite a bit as the game proceeds.

 

I do agree with Jake that the little journey through the wireframe art was nice though. It felt more cohesive and stylistic than I would've expected. It was more like the original versions of Space Quest 1 and early King's Quest games compared to their VGA remakes than an intermediary/early art pass. The wireframe PillowTron was especially good, great stuff. But I was really expecting the game was going to have the characters in conflict over their goals and I would've appreciated seeing those interactions more than the meta stuff.

Also the basic conclusion was also disappointing in how it sort of painted Chuck as a misunderstood genius instead of a pretty vile person who was ruining the town and lives before he ever expected what was up.