Thimbleweed Park

While I missed the Kickstarter for this game, I still followed it excited through its development. A new adventure game by the creator of Monkey Island? Sign me up. The most promising part was that Ron Gilbert said he wanted this game to feel like how we REMEMBERED these games to be, not how they actually were. So, did it succeed? Yes, wonderfully. Not without its problems, though. Artistically, the game shines. The pixel art is authentic and beautiful, music and sound are very appealing and voice acting is almost perfect. The story is intriguing and full of mysteries and humor, and the puzzles are fair and don't need any crazy leaps of logic. The characters are mostly interesting and the locations are varied and picturesque. And, like promised, gameplay is streamlined to remove old irritations from the past (you now have autosave and can run and fast travel, for instance). What's the bad, then? Well, TP knows exactly what kind of game it is, and it likes to show it, sometimes to its detriment. There are a lot of references to old games, and while the target audience should certainly be familiar with them, it feels like many people will be alienated by feeling they're missing on many jokes. There are a lot of 4th-wall breaking jokes, and while it's cute at first at some point it becomes a bit grating. There is, though, an in-game explanation for this, which softens the blow a bit, but if self-referential humor is not your thing you're gonna have a hard time. The most annoying part, though, is the irritating excess of red herrings. There are too many items that fill your inventory and serve no use. Worse, there are many puzzles that you will spend a lot of time solving and do nothing to advance the story and can, in fact, be perfectly avoided. Not that there's any indication to it, and you will waste a lot of time solving useless puzzles. Despite the negatives, it's still an amazing game. The good far outweighs the bad. I fully recommend it.

The comedy around its self awareness (that its a game) grows old fast and the needless poking fun at sierra was only amusing once. That said its a great fun point and click that stands up to other current adventure games, even without the nostalgia elements. Thats just a bonus :)

TL;DR = Games released 30+ years ago are still better than this. As others have said, it starts off strong and feels as if it will go somewhere with entertaining characters. Instead we get dry (Mars dry) "humor" from the lead characters that is uninsprired. The voice acting is in between amertuerish and "we hired Lorenzo Lamas" quality. If this were a spoof on the games of old I could understand, but it is supposed to be serious. It is not. The many puzzle have almost zero clues, end up making little sense, like, at all. (I played Hugo growing up) To put the cherry on the cake, a long running joke with a fould mouthed character that is *bleeped* that works given the style of game. They went greedy, took already recorded lines, and just uncensored them to sell as DLC. Rubbish. And boy howdy did the ending make me want a refund. And defenestration. Few games make me feel like I wasted my time, but by the end, yeah, I want my time back.

Like the Witcher 3, Thimbleweed Park is too often marked as the second coming of the genre. Well, it is not. The humor is too referential and reminiscent more often than not and mildly amusing at best. Then there is a seperate spooky story line that seems to just be there to fulfill a kickstarter stretch goal. Also towards the end the puzzles become increasingly pointless, like Mr Gilbert ran out of ideas, which he already did enough during the game. Because obviously he cannot come up with anything else than Do You Remember The Good Old Times?-humor. Yes I do, I was there, thank you. And than there is the increasingly annoying 4th wall breaking, up to the point that the game _heavily_borrows_ from a very famous Keanu Reeves-movie trilogy. I paid 5 bucks for that game and I am glad I did not pay more. The game is entertaining enough but don't expect too much.

I disliked it because the story: the story is pretty much everything in that kind of games. The story has holes and inconsistencies. 1 of many examples: some antagonists cooperate with no reasons. We don't (and we never will) know why: maybe because is cool to have 4+ playable characters at the same time? The details make a story believable or not. If the story is not immersive, become a good programming exercise. Graphics are wonderful. The sense of incompleteness will accompany you during the whole travel till the sad end.