Thimbleweed Park Review

Ron Gilbert knows how to make a * beep * good game!

Making a good oldschool point & click adventure game is like playing the Limbo dance game at a beach party. To set the "bar" high, you must lower it as low as possible. You need to shake off anything that restricts you and make things as 'authentic' as possible. You will definitely use the latest resources but you must do so with respect to the past. When it comes to old-fashioned games, I always have my reservations. It was a strange time when I grew up, with many shortcomings, omissions and special methods of developing video games. From text input as commands to Lucas Scumm Engine and plain text on screen to dialog system in games like Monkey Island. We are talking about a time when graphics had not yet managed to pass into 3D. Times where the sound was coming out of the computer's internal speaker, and could not produce anything other than different tones of a simple * beep *.

And yet, for those days these games were the cutting edge of technology. Decades have passed since then and a lot of things have changed. Now our mobile phone has as much power as all the computers in the world at that time. It is, therefore, difficult to manage to appreciate a creation today with 'values from the past'. The only thing such games can do is make the work of other creators more difficult. When you think you have seen everything and when everything you have seen is mediocre, it is difficult to deal with this part again.

Adventure games nowadays, are a special category anyway. They do not have the buying audience that shooters have, but this has not always been the case. There was a time when, as I said, they were kings of video games. The two main adventure game companies were LucasArts and Sierra Online. Two different 'schools', each with its own successful series of adventures. Thimbleweed Park co-founders Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick worked at Lucas.

They then gave the world some of the best video games of all time, such as 'Monkey Island' and 'Maniac Mansion' or the often sidelined 'Zak Mckracken'. So I return to the original subtitle of this review, noting: Ron * beeping * Gilbert can * beeping * make a good * beeping * game!
Most of the time, going back to the past, in addition to 'obsession', also creates a bad product since technology has advanced a lot. Some also believe that people like Ron Gilbert have gone down in history by 'luck'. They happened to be in the right place at the right time and that was it. Well, I'm glad I can deny this theory. Thimbleweed Park is one of those bright exceptions in gaming as well as in the kickstarter platform that makes you feel proud that you are a gamer, backer and a fan of this particular person.

The story of the game has to do with a murder. Two special agents, Rey and Reyes, arrive in a small town to solve a crime and catch the killer. Naturally, this is not easy. This small inhospitable town hides many secrets. Our goal is to unfold the tangle of the story. The script is signed by Gilbert himself and here we have to give credit once again, I honestly did not think that the writing of the game would have been maintained at such a high level. Especially when it comes to the end, I think it is fantastic. It was the icing on the cake. I do not remember seeing anything similar in a game before. Its an ending you have to see to understand the whole game. During your exploration there will be many tricky and strange events that I can not talk about, but I can refer to what has been shown in the trailers of the game, such as the control and display system.

Here we have a system similar to that of the SCUMM engine where specific commands are located in the lower left part of the screen, while the lower right part is occupied by the inventory where we can find all our useful items. At first you may find it tedious as the 'command' option at the bottom of the screen is something that has long been overcome, but believe me, it will not cause you any problems, nor will you be outraged by this system. After all, it is, as I said, a game created with values ​​and principles from the past and a modern system would take a lot away from the experience. For your convenience there are tutorials on everything in the game menu.

However, since I have dealt with many adventure games, I have to say that this system is probably the most sophisticated that exists, as it utilizes the player's thinking in creating phrases. So for example we can execute complex commands like 'Give that object to someone', or 'push that object' and so on.

Thimbleweed Park may not satisfy many modern gamers visually, as it remains true to that era when adventure games were a bunch of pixels. Here we are dealing with the personal preference of everyone, however, the game itself knows exactly what it wants to do. It knows what it's like to be in a game created in 1987, not 2017. For this reason, whatever alienates you in it, know that it is intentionally created that way. That was the essence of their Kickstarter campaign. And, oh my God, what an experience! It is one of the few games that has such memorable characters, situations and environments. All the characters in the game have something to offer, and they stayed in my mind a lot longer than I expected.

It also seems to have been understood by players over the years, which point in these games is annoying. There is no such annoying point in this game, such as squeaky or excessive voice overs, absurd puzzles or bad humor. Everything has a specific flow and intention, a smooth writing and excellent voice overs that help the atmosphere. Humor is at a high level and contains dozens of references to our pop culture, video games, adventure games themselves and many times the game itself breaks the wall that separates the player with the pixels on the screen.

Old adventure game lovers will love Ron Gilbert's satire, though they may find a couple of jokes to be repeated. Especially in the first half of the game where the atmosphere is still light, the humor is unstoppable. I really miss that kind of fun in games.
It goes far beyond our usual routine that goes by the name 'click until the game is over, and let's move on to the next one'. Here you watch and play a show at the same time.
The game tries to entertain you and make you think. Is there a better thing?

The characters as I said are memorable. Especially the clown Ransome or the Sheriff of the city. I'm so glad they got the financial goal of their campaign to incorporate voice overs because they literally make a huge difference. The satire is scattered and multi-layered and touches on some very sensitive issues, even family ones. The only downside I have to point out is the fact that you can not skip the dialogues. This may be a little annoying when you need to listen to them for the second and third time, but that may be the way the game tells you to think of something else.

As a game, one can characterize it as an 'Open world - multiple ending adventure', since to a very large percentage you can do things without a specific series. Each protagonist has a notebook in which there is a list of things to do, without necessarily being in numerical order. There are also two different difficulty levels for the game, casual for beginners and hard mode for more experienced players. It took me about 15 hours to complete the game without reading over 100 different books in it, many of which were contributed by those who supported the game's campaign in kickstarter. In fact, some of them, to my surprise, even required decryption.

Watch the trailer below.

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Box Art

Tested on : PC
Developer : Terrible Toybox
Publisher : Terrible Toybox
Available for : PC, Xbox One
Release date : 2017-03-30

You can check the game here ❗️

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