Posted on: April 30, 2018

fade0ff

Games: 1224 Reviews: 83

Solid but overhyped

Well, Thimbleweed Park is not a bad game, but it's totally overhyped and more like a fangame than something that qualifies for a commercial release in the 21st century. There are lots of minor flaws but the main issue is that it thinks it's much funnier and better designed that it actually is. Indeed, it starts really terribly with one of the worst voice acting performances (the German homicide victim) in history followed by awful dialogs of the Mulder/Scully lookalikes with the Sheriff/Coroner/Hotel Manager (with all that "a-reno" and "a-boo"). This is worsened by the fact that you can't skip dialogs. While the minimalist walking animations somewhat resemble that of the very first LuscasArst adventures (Maniac Mansion/Zak McKracken) they are just ugly and don't fit the pseudo retro style. Plus the characters move much too fast most of the time, so it looks like they are not walking but teleporting. Then there's the issue that the game actually only pretends to be lores, so when your pixelated characters move away from you, their pixels become smaller which totally breaks the retro look. Regarding the puzzle design: admittedly, most of the puzzles are logical to some degree (apart from things like charging the battery which show the typical lack of scientific education) but there are two consistent flaws throughout the game. Firstly, some puzzle solutions simply don't work until a certain point in the story was reached. Secondly, some things only work with certain characters. This can be frustrating as its not always clear that a puzzle can't be solved yet or a different character is needed. Actually there are just too many characters and they wouldn't be needed if the designers hadn't limited certain actions or items to one specific character deliberately. Honestly, I also missed exciting locations (like in Zak McKracken), found the story to be somewhat bland and didn't like the ending. Well, and there are much too few save slots.

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Posted on: October 11, 2020

Yffisch

Verified owner

Games: 523 Reviews: 55

A Masterpiece

This feels like a combination of all MMucas Flem PnCs and I have waited 3 years to play this. I bought it to play it immediately, but did not have the energy since I wanted to replay Monkey Island and the other games instead of starting a new adventure. Which I kind of regret. I started playing this three years later and it felt just like "lol, are they really trying to do something that will be even close to the old 90s PnCs in greatness? This feels just like some lousy ripoff, please try something new". But after 10 minutes, it was more like "Ok, it's quite interesting after all. I may like this a bit". Then after an hour I was "Wow, this is really something". After 2 hours I felt confident within Ron Gilbert's hands, he did it again. Another masterpiece. I just finished the game and wow, what a plot! I'm very much impressed and my hat is off forever when it comes to Ron Gilbert future games.

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Posted on: May 1, 2023

arc7urus

Verified owner

Games: 75 Reviews: 5

Disappointing

I have been playing adventure games for three decades, including all the major titles created by Ron Gilbert. As such, I could not have skipped Thimbleweed Park, which I actively backed during its crowdfunding phase. I am also used to Gilbert's style of storytelling and his ability to create great memorable games from a silly narrative. But Thimbleweed Park is far from becoming a memorable or great game. It starts with an engaging and atmospheric story that leaves plenty of options to build a great adventure. Soon, several story arcs and questions start opening. But when the game is expected to get deeper and more interesting it is exactly when it starts falling apart. The story starts losing cohesion and no effort is made to create meaningful relationships between the characters. As a result, the game premise and narrative become secondary, and the player is left with nothing but a sequence of random puzzles to solve. As the game reaches its ending, the initial premise, the story, and all questions that the player faced during the whole game are simply left open. I am aware that silly and/or disappointing game endings are a kind of Ron Gilbert's trademark, as recently demonstrated again in the “The Return to Monkey Island". But TP's ending is just lazy and manages to ruin the whole premise. In my case, this is a game that I will not play again because the quality of the puzzles is far from being sufficient to compensate for the disappointing narrative. Anyway, Thimbleweed Park should be tried by all point-and-click adventure game lovers because of its graphics and design. But if you are new to adventure games then look elsewhere and pick a game with a satisfying narrative.

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Posted on: March 24, 2021

nachteule

Games: 147 Reviews: 3

Loved it

Nice, nice, nice! A great classic adventure game for oldtimers like me ;-) If you love old school adventures this game is for you! Buy, buy, buy :-))

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Posted on: June 7, 2017

48kRAM

Verified owner

Games: 181 Reviews: 3

Great game with a let-down ending

I really enjoyed this game, right up until the ending. I know a lot of people didn't have a problem with the ending, but it honestly left me feeling almost wishing I'd not spent the ~18 hours playing. Very unfulfilling. Maybe that's the point - I dunno. Still, the puzzles were fun, the humor was appreciated (I'm a fan of Lucas* adventure games) and the art is great.

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