A new quest from the author of the Monkey Island series has been released on PC. It’s pixelated and features an interface from the 80s. But funny.
What?
An ironic retro quest about two federal agents investigating a murder in the strange town of Thimbleweed Park. Author (screenwriter, designer and programmer) – Ron Gilbert, screenwriter and designer of Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island series and producer of Total Annihilation.
How?
Thimbleweed Park is a full–fledged stylization for Lucas Arts quests. It’s not just about pixel art, but also about gameplay, mechanics, controls and design. If it weren’t for the resolution, the glow effects and the smooth movement of the camera tracking the characters, it would be easy to mistake the game for the one-year-old Day of the Tentacle 1993.
The screen is divided into three parts. The largest one displays game locations, hero, NPC. Below it is a panel with 9 commands that can be applied to game objects, and inventory.
The gameplay is appropriate. For example, we see a corpse, click on the “Look at” button and on the corpse, get a comment, draw a conclusion and perform another action that should move the plot further.
Why pay attention?
Thimbleweed Park is a dream game of one of the stars of the gaming industry of the early 90s. A hymn to the era and once one of the most popular genres from the one who made this genre the way we know it today.
Perhaps the tragedy is that the celebrity decided not to move the genre forward, but returned to where he started his career. On the other hand, the project is the quintessence of quests of that time, a maxim within a narrow niche: five game characters, logical (at least at first) riddles, a good plot and funny dialogues.
By the way, Gilbert, who spent three years on development and raised $626 thousand for it on Kickstarter, even has competitors in this field today.
The first is Wadjet Eye Games, which has learned to churn out excellent, but short pixel adventure games (pay attention to the ingenious Blackwell and Gemini Rue).
The second is former comrade Tim Shafer. His ambitious Broken Age, despite the $3.3 million collected for development, never became a cult game, a new word in the genre. After that, Shafer put on stream the production of controversial remasters of his own games of the early 90s.
What should I be ready for?
It’s still a retro game. It demonstrates not only what the games used to cling to, but also how far ahead the industry has gone today.
P.S. Pay attention to Gilbert’s blog. In it, he talks about all aspects of game development. In one of the last posts, Ron, for example, shares in detail how he chose the price tag for his game.