CorianderV
Neo Member
Are you using the R and L bumpers to jump from the action buttons back to the objects onscreen? Its a time-saver.
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Thimbleweed Park - a Ron Gilbert game |OT| Thirty-scumm years of adventures
- Thread starter Sir_Crocodile
- Start date
Are you using the R and L bumpers to jump from the action buttons back to the objects onscreen? Its a time-saver.
fierrotlepou
Member
Well, problem solved. Thanks a lot! I'm not sure if they explained that.
CorianderV
Neo Member
It was explained in the tutorial . . . but since the tutorial seems to have been optional, you might not have seen it.
Despite once being a huge fan of this style of game, I haven't played this type of adventure game in YEARS and I'm really enjoying my time with it so far. Started with casual, but thinking about bumping up the difficulty to hard. Is it actually hard, like the way old-school adventure games were or is there logic behind the solutions?
NintendosBooger
Member
There a way to drag the second detective with you or do you have to keep switching to them to make them follow?
AFAIK, there's only World of Goo that has implemented gyro pointer controls yet.
ResidentWeevil13
Member
My suggestion: Don't bother keeping them together. It's hard at first to get used to. You feel like you're leaving one behind. But just explore different places with different characters. It'll be fine. And if they ever need to be in the same area, the other one will catch up on his own. And say "Hey, don't leave me" or something like that
I try to stick with the guy since his voice acting is so much better.
ResidentWeevil13
Member
I haven't noticed a difference in quality, really. But that's just me.
Baron_Calamity
Member
I lost interest around the beginning of chapter 4 and never went back.
Each analog stick has different cursor speeds.
Jimnymebob
Member
Is this closer to Maniac Mansion or SoMI/MI2 in terms of gameplay and humour?
I never liked Maniac Mansion, but the Monkey Islands are two of my favourite games, and the pinnacle of the genre for me.
I never liked Maniac Mansion, but the Monkey Islands are two of my favourite games, and the pinnacle of the genre for me.
Never played Maniac Mansion, but it's nothing like Monkey Island.
Feels closer to Day of the Tentacle and The Dig... but not nearly as good
Adam Prime
hates soccer, is Mexican
I used to play this game called Hugos House of Horrors on PC when I was a kid. This game looks like that... is it?
Jimnymebob
Member
Hmmm... I don't mind DotT, but it was never my favourite of Lucasarts stuff. That being said, I never liked Fate of Atlantis, so my opinions are probably invalid lol.
I don't really remember The Dig though. Was that the one where you started off floating in space?
Sir_Crocodile
Member
It's the same genre, yes. Though with a graphical verb interface (hence "point and click") rather then a text parser, and a substantially better game.
Yup
Yup
QuixoticNeutral
Member
Oh my god: as a veteran of the 1990s LucasArts classics when they were in their prime, a few hours in (I'm at
) I am in love. This is on Hard with "Annoying in-jokes" ticked, though I don't know if the latter refers to the considerable volume of one-off LucasArts throwbacks or something even more obscure.
My only complaint is that as someone who prefers a combination of touch and buttons on the Switch (I'm using buttons for character switching, dialogue trees, and slowly panning over the humongous number of unique book titles on the shelves, and touch for everything else), I wish we had some minor degree of interface customization like swapping the D-pad navigation over to the face buttons on the right side. I find that I like to cradle the Switch in my left hand while using touch controls and the occasional button on my right, but I'd have an even better time of this if I had D-pad navigation (not the sluggish R-stick) on my right hand rather than my left, for absolute precision while selecting dialogue without having to adjust my grip on the unit. (So far I've experimented with a number of different setups to get this the way I want, and the closest I can get is to put my Joy-Cons in a controller grip, put the controller by my side, and reach for the buttons with my right hand as needed. It's not ideal.)
I'll say more when I'm finished, as I'm clearly still in the honeymoon period, but so far this game has been for me what Sonic Mania was to the Genesis-era Sonic die-hards. I've played so many games by the major LucasArts alumni (Ron Gilbert included) in recent years, hoping something would scratch the itch, and now we have a game that absolutely nails what the SCUMM adventures were all about and also pushes the narrative possibilities of the format in new directions. The multi-character setup and the rising anticipation of how the plethora of key items will be exchanged definitely make DotT seem like the closest cousin. This has tapped into something fierce, and I hope it lasts all the way.
Delores' segment in the mansion
My only complaint is that as someone who prefers a combination of touch and buttons on the Switch (I'm using buttons for character switching, dialogue trees, and slowly panning over the humongous number of unique book titles on the shelves, and touch for everything else), I wish we had some minor degree of interface customization like swapping the D-pad navigation over to the face buttons on the right side. I find that I like to cradle the Switch in my left hand while using touch controls and the occasional button on my right, but I'd have an even better time of this if I had D-pad navigation (not the sluggish R-stick) on my right hand rather than my left, for absolute precision while selecting dialogue without having to adjust my grip on the unit. (So far I've experimented with a number of different setups to get this the way I want, and the closest I can get is to put my Joy-Cons in a controller grip, put the controller by my side, and reach for the buttons with my right hand as needed. It's not ideal.)
I'll say more when I'm finished, as I'm clearly still in the honeymoon period, but so far this game has been for me what Sonic Mania was to the Genesis-era Sonic die-hards. I've played so many games by the major LucasArts alumni (Ron Gilbert included) in recent years, hoping something would scratch the itch, and now we have a game that absolutely nails what the SCUMM adventures were all about and also pushes the narrative possibilities of the format in new directions. The multi-character setup and the rising anticipation of how the plethora of key items will be exchanged definitely make DotT seem like the closest cousin. This has tapped into something fierce, and I hope it lasts all the way.
I played with the in-jokes button ticked as well (how could you not!) so I haven't seen the non in-joke version myself, but one example I've read about online is in Ransome's first scene, where in the in-joke version
you can see characters like Guybrush, the Maniac Mansion tentacles and Edisons and the Zak McKracken alien guys in the audience, and they're not there in the non-injoke version.
I think they mostly added that option as a joke after some reviews complained about the game having too many in-jokes. Kinda the same thing as the toilet paper under/over option.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Personally I'd disagree. Ranking TP into the Lucas games I'd go:
1. Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis
2. Day Of The Tentacle
3. Monkey Island 2: LeChucks Revenge
4. Monkey Island
5. Thimbleweed Park
6. Maniac Mansion
7. Sam and Max Hit The road
8. Curse of Monkey Island
9. Loom
10. The Dig
11. Grim Fandango
12. Full Throttle
13. Zak Mckracken
14. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
15. Monkey Island 4
Thimbleweed park has a disappointing ending, and the writing in general while good is not up to the best of lucasarts. But the tone and atmosphere are superb (they for sure got the early lucasarts vibe dead on), and the puzzles in general are better then any lucasarts game.
CecilRousso
Member
Thought it was decent. Ending was disappointing, and the biggest let down.
Puzzles were good overall, but they didn't have as much variation as the best LucasArts games, and it was annoying to have that many red herrings, and access to characters when they couldn't do anything.
Would give it 3/5. Would gladly back a new game from them, but hope they don't try that kind of ending again.
QuixoticNeutral
Member
Finished this on Hard with no outside help, though for the longest time I ran aground of the silliest sticking point in Part Four (
). Once that was out of the way, I already had so much else figured out already in terms of what I needed or what I should keep my eyes out for that I blazed through the rest of the story. My total playtime was fairly lengthy, though, as I tend to play these games to see what the developers put in and what characters say when I try things that self-evidently shouldn't work, so I was poking around with possible interactions everywhere.
This led to some interesting consequences:
- ThimbleCon:
- The can of non-infringing Poopsi:
- Epilogue:
Anyway, I adored this game, and I could gush about the particulars all day. I've played many of Ron Gilbert's games (the Humongous games, DeathSpank, The Cave, etc.) and this is easily his best since he was at LucasArts. As a player who drifted further and further away from games as a narrative form as one purported masterpiece after another was a rank disappointment, this is the most faith I've had in the possibilities of the medium since Grim Fandango, and a lot of that comes down to how Thimbleweed Park exploited everything that SCUMM format can do at its best in using the basic elements of dialogue trees and item-matching puzzles as techniques for character development, irony, and suspense. The game likes to brag a lot about how the "MMucasFlem" adventure changed things up from text adventures, Sierra's games, or the "murder simulators" that really did wind up decisively winning the culture war for PC dominance, but it's well earned, and so much about this experience was a strong reminder of how revolutionary the LucasArts classics felt in their own time.
I was a little surprised that conversations between the playable characters was a late addition in a post-release patch, as I would have found their absence glaring. I already thought it was a little off that you generally couldn't "look at" human characters that you could "talk to" (just to listen to your playable characters make snide private observationsimagine what Ransome could have done with this), and this actually threw me off right from the opening scene because I kept trying to make Boris look at Willie, only to for him to talk to Willie instead.
As far as red herrings go, there is definitely a huge, conspicuous number of loose ends or spare items pointing to cut content. Some of it you can throw out in the dumpster, and that's one way you know an item won't be useful (with the exception of
), but this isn't all that consistent, and the haphazard dead ends are all over the place, like
Then there's the clearing of the inventory between segments:
I suppose this happens when you have a tangled dependency chart and don't want to cut back too much of the unused items/interactions in case that breaks something else, but it's one thing that sticks out as untidy, given how many items just vanish off the board unused.
That's a more excessive difference than I expectedI would have thought the in-joke option just applied to verbal items like the reference to Dr. Fred in the coroner's office, in case players mistook them for clues (you never know when snatches of dialogue are relevant), not to all the cameos in the background art. In the first circus scene I was already a little surprised that the throwbacks didn't go nearly as far as they could have: you have an entire character here who is an insult clown and he never once accuses somebody else of fighting like a *bleeping* cow.
(And I couldn't be the only one the *bleeping* reminded of "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", given how heavy the X-Files influence is in this game.)
I would guess there is a strong correlation between people who would rank MI2 high and those who would do the same for Thimbleweed Park, particularly where their endings are concerned. (Grim is my #1, and Curse is somewhat iconoclastically my favourite MI, but other than that we can agree on an unambiguous top half, in which Thimbleweed Park absolutely belongs.)
I don't know what everybody else's issue with the ending is, or if there's just one, but for me it just felt very obvious and by-the-bookreally easy to figure out by around Part Four (
), as though it was the ending they had to stick with given the project's whole conception from the start as a LucasArts throwback.
If you've played MI2, what truly sticks out about Thimbleweed's ending is that it's so non-controversial.
Apart from that, I didn't mind the ending so much, as
In the end I didn't want to let this town or its people go. You get to know the whole town as a concentrated setting in a way not really seen in any game I can think of since Day of the Tentacle delivered the centuries-spanning history of a single mansion, but Thimbleweed Park has a scope and breadth to it that qualitatively feels much larger than its predecessors despite how the game is segmented into parts. I don't know if it actually is that much larger in complexity or puzzle count, as it's been so long since I last went into one of these games totally cold, and my puzzle-solving skills can't be directly compared to what they were then. What I do know is that I was absorbed from start to finish.
not thinking of pushing the ladder over in the occult bookshop and wondering how on earth I could get the spell book for Franklin, when there was no way of asking for it in dialogue or specifying what I was looking for so I wouldn't get told off whenever I clicked on books
This led to some interesting consequences:
- ThimbleCon:
I never did get the starship model from Sexy Riker because all of my characters informed him that the best show ever was something other than Star Trek.
Leonard was devoured by the man-eating plant and I never got him back out, but for a moment I thought I could, as I realized that watering Chuck the Plant with the Poopsi made him belch and figured out, correctly, that applying the Poopsi to the man-eating plant would make it belch as welland more intensely the more you do it. But it never did amount to anything, even though I had my eyes peeled for some additional ingredient like a Mentos or something that, combined with the Cola, would get Leonard back out and possibly an unexpected key item with him.
I got Ransome's bad ending, playing him as incorrigibly rude and unable to change his ways, and really appreciated that I was given the choice of doing so given that we had just been told by the story that nobody in this contrived game world has any choice. Delores' ending was also easy to reach without consulting the Kickstarter video, which I appreciated: in the context of the ending it makes sense to have an interaction that makes no intrinsic sense without reference to the external world outside the game, but I still found it important for this to be playable on its own terms, and it was.
Anyway, I adored this game, and I could gush about the particulars all day. I've played many of Ron Gilbert's games (the Humongous games, DeathSpank, The Cave, etc.) and this is easily his best since he was at LucasArts. As a player who drifted further and further away from games as a narrative form as one purported masterpiece after another was a rank disappointment, this is the most faith I've had in the possibilities of the medium since Grim Fandango, and a lot of that comes down to how Thimbleweed Park exploited everything that SCUMM format can do at its best in using the basic elements of dialogue trees and item-matching puzzles as techniques for character development, irony, and suspense. The game likes to brag a lot about how the "MMucasFlem" adventure changed things up from text adventures, Sierra's games, or the "murder simulators" that really did wind up decisively winning the culture war for PC dominance, but it's well earned, and so much about this experience was a strong reminder of how revolutionary the LucasArts classics felt in their own time.
I was a little surprised that conversations between the playable characters was a late addition in a post-release patch, as I would have found their absence glaring. I already thought it was a little off that you generally couldn't "look at" human characters that you could "talk to" (just to listen to your playable characters make snide private observationsimagine what Ransome could have done with this), and this actually threw me off right from the opening scene because I kept trying to make Boris look at Willie, only to for him to talk to Willie instead.
As far as red herrings go, there is definitely a huge, conspicuous number of loose ends or spare items pointing to cut content. Some of it you can throw out in the dumpster, and that's one way you know an item won't be useful (with the exception of
the empty bottle on the road that respawns if you throw it out, so you can turn it in for a nickel
the bank flyer that tells you opening account will get you a toaster, which only has a single interaction as far as I can tellthat if you hand it to the bank manager he tells you they're out of toasters.
I can understand why the broken bottles of ketchup don't return from Delores' first section, as they're just there to make you say "Aha, that might be the murder weapon"but what about poor Lurleen?
That's a more excessive difference than I expectedI would have thought the in-joke option just applied to verbal items like the reference to Dr. Fred in the coroner's office, in case players mistook them for clues (you never know when snatches of dialogue are relevant), not to all the cameos in the background art. In the first circus scene I was already a little surprised that the throwbacks didn't go nearly as far as they could have: you have an entire character here who is an insult clown and he never once accuses somebody else of fighting like a *bleeping* cow.
(And I couldn't be the only one the *bleeping* reminded of "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", given how heavy the X-Files influence is in this game.)
I would guess there is a strong correlation between people who would rank MI2 high and those who would do the same for Thimbleweed Park, particularly where their endings are concerned. (Grim is my #1, and Curse is somewhat iconoclastically my favourite MI, but other than that we can agree on an unambiguous top half, in which Thimbleweed Park absolutely belongs.)
I don't know what everybody else's issue with the ending is, or if there's just one, but for me it just felt very obvious and by-the-bookreally easy to figure out by around Part Four (
Chuck's first text-adventure diary, the Blazing Saddles Betamax tape, etc. pretty much spell out exactly what to expect for anyone paying attention at all
So when Chuck and Delores chat about everything that is game-like about their game-world, my reaction was, "Yes, we all know this already, and for that matter, so should you." But the other thing to remember here is that, as a LucasArts throwback, the original games were already nonchalant about the fourth wall, so it almost seems like that was part of the deal, only updated for the Kickstarter era with what has to be my favourite implementation of backer rewards anywhere.
Apart from that, I didn't mind the ending so much, as
it was clear to me that the important thing is not the truth behind the mystery or the game-world; that was all rather obvious and rote (though I like the implication that the sheriff/coroner/hotel manager are, in the game world, not just the same actor to save on the budget, but a line of identical robots who perform Chuck's dirty work of the actual corporeal violenceand I especially like that this isn't spelled out in the denouement but left for attentive players to discover). Rather, it's what the characters do with that information; and while the town in the epilogue is a little too locked down to one permitted interaction per character, with very little optional content for anyone apart from stopping to see Willieyou turn in your plot token to the one obvious/permitted place and that's itthere's a certain sweetness to how each of them performs the final task that is just completely in character.
In the end I didn't want to let this town or its people go. You get to know the whole town as a concentrated setting in a way not really seen in any game I can think of since Day of the Tentacle delivered the centuries-spanning history of a single mansion, but Thimbleweed Park has a scope and breadth to it that qualitatively feels much larger than its predecessors despite how the game is segmented into parts. I don't know if it actually is that much larger in complexity or puzzle count, as it's been so long since I last went into one of these games totally cold, and my puzzle-solving skills can't be directly compared to what they were then. What I do know is that I was absorbed from start to finish.
Any gameplay differences?
Sir_Crocodile
Member
My main issue is that the character endings weren't that amazing - like even if
I have Ransome turn over a new leaf, he becomes so absurdly vanilla there's no possible way he could ever be a success. It's not like he just goes from 100 MPH to 60, he goes all the way down to zero. Felt a bit lazy. Although Delores had a good'un, nurse edna remains TERRIFYING.
Curse is a fantastic game, but lighter in tone then I like for MI (I always enjoy it more when I just ignore that it's an MI game, but that can be tough). Grim nails the tone but the puzzles...I've never played a game before with such an outstandingly good story yet such bad puzzles. It was like Full Throttle but an even better story and even worse puzzles lol.
Well, the switch version has touch controls. Not aware of anything unique to the PS4 version, but I don't have it.
Jo Shishido's Cheeks
Member
On Switch can this be played entirely using touch controls?
Better still, can I play with Joycons detached?
Better still, can I play with Joycons detached?
Yep. Im quite enjoying playing the Switch in an entirely new way.
Haunted
Member
Yes to both.
Jo Shishido's Cheeks
Member
Late but thanks for the info guys, bought the game.
This is actually my first traditional PnC game and Im in love. Just hit part 4 last night, dying to continue playing later
CecilRousso
Member
I'm of a different opinion, with the first two Monkey Island games being favorite games for me since the Amiga500 period.
The ending of Monkey Island 2 wasn't that strong, but it worked because it left things open to interpretation about what happened, with LeChucks eyes changing when he is kid, and Elaine being left behind, wondering what happened to them. It's a weird ending, but it didn't take anything away from the characters and very little about the events.
While in Thimbleweed Park[/spoiler]the ending takes away most of value of the already thin characters, and the events during the game, by one of the cheapest endings I've encountered in the genre, where all the events that are left to explained are done so by pretty much just saying that they don't matter. [/spoiler].
I thought the game was decent, often very fun, a 3/5 and I would back another crowdfunding campaign from the devs. It had a great style that did capture the spirit of those old adventure games, despite the flaws. But I thought the ending devaluated the experience, and I'm a bit amused that this game gets a free pass from most of the things Broken Age was criticized for.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Does Ron Gilbert feel like Japanese developers ripped him off or something? [Major Ending Spoilers ]
Soo I've been thinking a fair bit about this since I beat the game on Sunday. I do think the ending is very flat but I feel like it is a very specific comment on reactions to MI's ending.
I think it's an interesting concept even though I don't really agree and think Gilbert botched the execution.
Really the game kind of feels like a 25 years late rebuttal to Monkey Island 2. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is Gilbert's first "adult" adventure game in that time. Just feels like something he really needed to get off of his chest.
I'm not sure how to take the reveal that Ray was being paid by a Japanese benefactor to essentially steal game code from Ron or one of his co-developers. Given the time period of the game and the prominence of Nintendo at the time it seems like a very deliberate choice to have her being paid by someone from Japan. But I can't say that any of Ron's games feel influential to Japanese developers to degree that, say, Ultima proved to be.
Soo I've been thinking a fair bit about this since I beat the game on Sunday. I do think the ending is very flat but I feel like it is a very specific comment on reactions to MI's ending.
My initial feeling was the same as yours- by making the game end with "it's all a videogame, nothing is real", I feel like it cheapens the characters and and makes me wonder why I was invested in them or this town in the first place. My interest in any prospective Thimbleweed Park 2 immediately plummeted despite loving the game overall.
However by making the final step of the game giving these characters closure despite the characters themselves knowing that they aren't real (and therefore shouldn't matter), I think Gilbert is saying that just because something is artificial doesn't matter as long as the player is invested. So, in the case of Monkey Island 2, the ending shouldn't take away your feelings for Guybrush and the rest of the cast. The same applies here.
However by making the final step of the game giving these characters closure despite the characters themselves knowing that they aren't real (and therefore shouldn't matter), I think Gilbert is saying that just because something is artificial doesn't matter as long as the player is invested. So, in the case of Monkey Island 2, the ending shouldn't take away your feelings for Guybrush and the rest of the cast. The same applies here.
I think it's an interesting concept even though I don't really agree and think Gilbert botched the execution.
Really the game kind of feels like a 25 years late rebuttal to Monkey Island 2. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is Gilbert's first "adult" adventure game in that time. Just feels like something he really needed to get off of his chest.
Jo Shishido's Cheeks
Member
Okay so how do I get the arcade tickets?
EDIT: never mind, just got them
EDIT: never mind, just got them
He says few times in the responses that sales are fine, that Tweet isn't about poor sales but just about Monkey Island fans =) I'm one, but yet to pick the game up. Aiming to get it before the year ends.not sure if thread worthy, but this made me kinda sad
(source)
At least it's not my fault, double dipped on PC and Switch :/
It also seemed to reach atleast some of the MI fans which is good!
brickarts295
Member
Hows the comedy when compared to the Monkey Island games? I must have died of laughter a couple of times while playing MI 1 and 2 SE when they came out. They are some of my favorite games of all times.
Damn, that tweet really works huh.