This guy rounds out the cast of five playable characters. Plenty of these brainteasers don't come with accompanying jokes or characterization, either, and they're just as frustrating now as they were back in the day. A lot of the problems in Thimbleweed Park can only be solved by randomly trawling through pixels on the screen in search of items to use on other items, with no sign of any hints or common sense telling you why (which, as veteran LucasArts players will know, is a pretty authentic recreation of how adventure game puzzles used to play out). While the game constantly makes meta-jokes about this dated design, that doesn’t actually make it any more fun. Just as the game is lacquered with late ’80s and early ’90s adventure references, the puzzle design feels like it's trapped in a past decade. The former cuts many of the game's obtuse puzzles and adds a very basic bit of tutorial for people who haven't played a point-and-click adventure game before, while the latter gives you the "full" Thimbleweed Park experience.Īfter working through all of the hard mode’s extra puzzles, though, I don't think I can recommend it. From the get-go, players can choose between "casual" and "hard" modes (there’s no option for those who want a mid-point “normal” experience, apparently). Strangely (and perhaps thankfully) the game lets you choose how much busywork you want. When it's at its best, Thimbleweed Park takes its chewy, nostalgic center and twists it into logic puzzles where the references feel interesting as well as simply "familiar." Sadly, compared to those high points, a lot of this point-and-clicker feels like busywork and pointlessly picking up things to use on other things. There is, in fact, an entire puzzle based on telling era-appropriate slang apart from ’70s and ’90s jargon to prove how cool you are (the game is set in 1987, for the record).Įven being a child of the ’90s, I found the temporal references to be some of the best gags in this irreverent murder mystery.
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There's the familiar verb-driven interface that asks you to select actions to "talk to," "use," and "look at" various objects in the environment to complete the next series of goals.įinally, Thimbleweed Park is so full of fourth-wall breaking in-jokes about adventure games and ’80s pop culture that I got the sense the developers were intentionally speaking in code to keep youngsters like me out of the loop. Like the LucasArts games of old, Thimbleweed overflows with pixel art so sharp you might cut yourself. With legendary LucasArts designers Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick behind it, as well as a Kickstarter campaign that promised a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion, this new adventure is decidedly rooted in nostalgia for a different age of adventure games.Įven if I didn’t grow up in the era of The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, I know enough to recognize its DNA in Thimbleweed Park. Links: Steam | Official websiteThe only classic LucasArts adventure game I ever played when it was new was Monkey Island 4, so I suspect Thimbleweed Park wasn't made with me in mind.
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Platform: Windows (reviewed), Mac, Linux, Xbox One
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