Thimbleweed Park

This game is really well done and easily captures the spirit of the old Lucas Arts PnC games. I just have two criticisms: First, you play up to five characters, similar to Maniac Mansion. However, I feel that (outside of prsonality), the characters don't really feel that different. Some tasks can only be completed with certain tasks, but I feel that it's not executed to 100%. Second, and this is purely a personal preference, this game breaks the fourth wall too often, but in a style which I do not completely like. It references old point and click games A LOT. Every second joke is basically about Monkey Island or Lucas Arts. This is fine, but becomes redundant after a while. Everything else is really great, with all the pros and cons of classic adventure games. I think fans of the genre will thoroughly enjoy it, while newcomers might not fully understand each and every joke.

Your appreciation of this game will depend very much on what type of person you are, and which you appreciate more in your "story driven" adventures (a term I use loosely in this case, as any player who has finished the game will understand): humor, or immersion? If you think humor in a point-and-click adventure is more important than immersion, this game might be your fix. Because it is a joke. I do not say this to derogate. This game is LITERALLY a joke. It is its own bloody punchline. It couldn't take itself, its characters or its story less seriously if it tried - which it certainly does not. If, however, you think, like me, that immersion and quality in storytelling is more important than slapstick humor, I feel obligated to warn you that if you go into Thimbleweed Park expecting a truly story-driven adventure of quality, you will be sorely disappointed. Do not get attached to these characters. Do not bother trying to understand the world and its logic. The game will punish you for this. I can't really say much more about it without spoiling the ending so I will just leave it at that. For players that tend to care about the characters in the games you play or are looking for a story-driven adventure that takes itself even slightly seriously, I cannot emphasize enough that you should keep looking. Thimbleweed Park will not scratch this itch, and will leave you feeling hollow when you finish it, even if you found the game itself up until that point enjoyable. Fortunately there are many other adventures out there that blow this game out of the water in this regard (which, I admit, isn't saying much because it doesn't even try). One quality series I can recommend a closer look at is the Blackwell series, a masterwork of supernatural fiction which is somewhat similar in atmosphere and setting.

Ugh. Just finished the game. *hurl* I loved the first half or more. Really good intrigue. Jokes were funny. Characters were cool, good dialogue, etc. Then the jokes repeated themselves over and over. Breaking the third wall talking trash about game dev. We get it. It's meta humor. Stop beating me over the head. MMucas Flem Games. We get it. Stop. I won't spoil anything but I hated the ending. Absolutely stupid. I really love point and clicks. This grabbed me at first but I am 6+ hours in, done and hate it.

Got GF Thimbleweed Park to get her opinion on it, didn't tell her a thing about it, she loved it all the way up until the factory. I've never seen her get so made at a game ending. Compounding her rage was the Dev's interviews who claimed, "The murders didn't matter," and they did that bizarre meta ending that made the first 3/4ths of the game pointless and left nearly every plot thread unresolved. She then went in and mapped out various unused items that involved puzzels ot obtain, etc. Read dev blogs and came to the conclusion that they either became creatively bankrupt at the end or ran out of money. They took out too many puzzles (shown in the KS video and elsewhere) that their own preview videos showed, but didn't remove the items involved. It's obvious what those items were meant to be used for, the security VCR + Beta Tape after using the bear mace to trigger the sprinkler system and get the quickie mart to empty, obviously you'd be able to see the tape then and to get the tape took like 8 puzzle steps too. Plus once you know the sewer contains evidence, you can no longer get there. She has a theory as to what happened in the actual game part's plot, but she's guessing either they couldn't finish the game in a way that felt satisfying so they tacked this bullshit in. Or they built 90% of the game in their OG artwork, and then when they decided to do a facelift, didn't have the budget to do EVERYTHING and thus trimmed corners. The game did have an art do-over 3/4ths of the way through development... The lead writers claim that this was how it was meant to be, doesn't ring true. The fat he said the murders don't matter, just made her seeth with rage. Judging by the forums, she is not alone and the dev is very very defensive about this. I think he was just caught with his pants down and is embarrassed personally. Thimbleweed Park great game for the first 3/4ths, HUGE disappointing ending. I agree with her conclusion.

This game has a wonderful "Lucasarts" feel; from the interface to graphics and humour, everything is an obvious nod to the adventures of the past. There's more than a little reference to classics like Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, from the very same authors Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. The homages go as far as to actually show characters from their classics in a scene of the game, and there's plenty of nods and 4th-wall breaking jokes. The graphics has a retro, pixelated-art style, very similar to Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion, but more refined. The music is rather good, while not as memorable as it was in the Monkey Island series. Where the game shines is in puzzles and humour. The puzzles and underlying mechanics are very clever and completely ridicule 95% of the other modern point-and-click adventures out there. It's just like a lesson in adventure games making, courtesy of Mr. Gilbert. It's not completely free of flaws, tho, which is part of why I didn't give the game a full 5/5. One of the puzzles, in particular, involves finding an object that is not visible and never hinted at, therefore you gotta go by sheer luck pointing the cursor somewhere. Since the game actively mocks pixel hunting by letting you collect single dust particles during the game, I was suprised that it, in fact, has some pixel hunting, sorta, itself. Everything involving operating the elevator, also, is pretty tedious, long and boring. Two of the main characters, agent Ray and agent Reyes, are pretty much carbon-copies of each other, with the exact same dialog options 90% of the times. Still, those defects, while notable, do not detract from the general enjoyment of the excellent gameplay and exquisite story. Speaking of the story, I am not going to spoil anything about it, but mind that the ending is potentially as divisive as Monkey Island 2's ending was. I personally didn't dislike it, but it didn't feel like the game strongest part to me. Overall, this is STRONGLY reccomended.