Thimbleweed Park

I really enjoyed playing Thimbleweed Park and I do not regret paying full price for it. The art is fantastic, the polish shines, the love is clear for all to see. But what held it back from greatness is its inability to not be a love letter to the genre. From comments by characters to the way the game concludes itself, this feels more like a meta-celebration of the genre than a credible new entry for it. If you aren't familiar with the golden age of point-and-click adventures, a good amount of this will go over your head. So while Thimbleweed Park has all the right ingredients, it bakes a bit of an odd cake. I was also not all that impressed by the game using its multiple characters to overcome basic puzzles without any real connection. Story takes a second row seat to puzzles, which frankly is not how it ought to be done. That said, this is by far the best adventure game I have played in the modern age and easily the most faithful to what made the greats stand out. Hopefully a sequel won't be so meta and instead stick to doing its own thing. I can't wait to see what these developers come up with next.

Like dinosaur from old swamp, Thimbleweed Park rises its head to say Hello to all fans of classical adventures and then go into void. Joking. Well, I never was a big fan of this type of games, but reception of TP was pretty good, so I decided to give it a try. The best things about game are, of course, characters, conversations and, to some extent, plot. Actually, I miss Ransome-like jerks in games too much, so it is relief to spectate local adventures. Technical part is not worth describing it too much: you can see everything on screenshots, but modern player may find it appealing by some way (as it is adapted for today’s resolutions, for example). The most controversial part to speak about is puzzling. You need to catch wave from Maniac Mansion, Day of Tentacle and so on to get understanding what to do and what is going on in most cases. Most of puzzles are quite funny to solve, but several are something of kind “You will never get me until you do me”. Frustration is only raising towards game end, and it can freak out some players (of course, excluding that ones who play games with complete walkthrough by hand). TP for certain can be recommended for LucasArts 80-90’ adventure lovers and for some general PnC fans; aside of them most players will quit quite soon even if they will be aroused by local atmosphere (and TUBES). Yes, and Ron Gilbert is not every humble about himself, to be speaking.

Smart, sophisticated and beautifully illustrated. I could not have hoped for more.

It was a tough choice between giving this 3 or 4 stars. If you are a big fan of classic Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts games then this one is a must-play because it really delivers a shot of graphic adventure nostalgia! The puzzles were clever and never too hard but also did not seem too easy either! I played it with my adult son and we never had to get any clues to complete it nor were we ever stuck more than a few minutes. The use of multiple characters was interesting and even though some of their dialogues were identical, this did not feel like much of an issue. The characters were a wee bit boring except for Ransom the Clown, who was delightful! The game has a couple of problems that cost it a star for me. The first is the mechanics of the interface was very tedious on a console. We played it on Xbox One and items that should have been defaulted to the USE command would always be LOOK so we found ourselves being reminded far too often that elevator buttons were indeed elevator buttons when it would have been FAR MORE USEFUL to simply have the default for the elevator buttons to have been USE after they had been LOOKED at once or twice! Lots of wasted time and frustration with the interface! The second issue is they brought the annoyances of 1990s adventure gaming back along with the good stuff! I don't want to mention specifics and risk a spoiler but one example is...after a few times of listening to a character's canned dialogue cut scene that you cannot skip, it seriously drops the fun factor! And there were other areas where we felt they could have left out a 1990s annoyance but thankfully there was enough fun in the game to overcome this. My bottom line is, if you were a big fan of games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle then you have to play this. If you liked early graphic adventure games you should seriously consider this. If neither of those describes you then you might wanna take a pass or wait until it gets down to around 5 dollars!

I am almost through the game on the harder mode and like the overall atmosphere, the pixelated graphics and funny character dialogues. I won't review the game in total. Just take my 3 / 5 star voting that I overall liked it and it is worth a buy. I did encounter many flaws and bugs which are typical for (old) point & click adventures and should have been avoided, especially when this is picked out ingame, too. First, items frequently despawn from character inventories and are returned to the place I found them. When I continue playing after quite some time, I expect my inventory to still have everything I have found so far. Otherwise, I will go through all the items to solve the current puzzles and be UNABLE to solve it until I consider the possibility that I was struck by that stupid bug again. The game postpones interactions sometimes, like grabbing items, and gives abolsutely no clues when smething changed about it. This caused by quite some headaches together with the bug mentioned above. Often, the game does not provide enough clues to solve the puzzles. This becomes annoying when you have to have knowledge about older technology or the solution to a puzzle is simply illogical. If you design funky puzzles with funky solutions, please be funky-friendly enough to give enough hints here and there. Walking simulator (although it denies to be one ingame!): You will have to walk around often and, yes!, you will encounter situations where you have to walk somewhere, to discover you have to walk back to where you came from, grab something because, now, you unlocked the option for it, and finally go back to the place of real progression and continue. Lastly, point & click does not mean you couldn't provide better, modern ways to navigate the graphical user interface, like allowing the use of keyboard buttons to navigate dialogue options. Fun game which should not only have taken the retro-feeling but also the meaningful innovations of it's genre into account.