KickStarter Thimbleweed Park: A New Ron Gilbert Classic Point & Click Adventure

[Astral Rag]

Spoiler

 

[Astral Rag]

The forgotten help screen... literally, we forgot to add it.

More:

General

O: Options
Space Bar: Pause
Number Keys (1, 2, 3, 4, 5): Switch between characters
Open Bracket: Volume down
Close Bracket: Volume up
. (dot): Skip dialog
ESC: Skip cutscene
CTRL+S: Save
CTRL+L: Load
CTRL+Q: Quit

Actions

Q: Open
A: Close
Z: Give
W: Pick up
S: Look at
X: Talk to
E: Push
D: Pull
C: Use

Talking

Up/Down Arrows: Move between lines
Enter: Select Line

UHS style incremental hints

 

[Archibald]

Anyone got any idea how many copies it needs to sell so that Gilbert could continue making more of this cool stuff?

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm not a fan of the constant 4th wall breaking shit. But overall the game is delightful, and these backgrounds are fucking ace.

 

[Boleskine]

Spoiler

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Lies and slander.

here is a pointless post about how I'm enjoying this game. However, the digs at Sierra seem a little cheap, given the last time Sierra released an adventure game was in, what, 1995 or something like that? Righto it's back to Matlock for me

This is something I noticed in the gameplay and preview videos, that there was a too much 4th wall meta commentary about death, dead-ends, Sierra games, and so on. Ron Gilbert complains about these things in almost all of his interviews as well.

Modern casual hipsters who likely didn't play adventure games in the 80s and 90s eat up this narrative about Sierra games being shit and give Ron all the credit for inventing point-and-click adventures, even though Maniac Mansion (1987) was not the first to use point-and-click mechanics.

Enchanted Scepters (1984)

Spoiler

Déjà Vu (1985)

Spoiler

Ron, Tim Schafer, and other LucasArts people seem to have a superiority complex when it comes to Sierra. Of course they're just

because Sierra games sold better than LucasArts games.

On the other hand I've never seen or read a former Sierra developer badmouth LucasArts.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Let them be jerks. It's their game, and Sierra is no more.

 

[Blackthorne]

So, the KS raised $626,250 - not sure how much more they raised in Pledgemaster or whatever, but a bunch of that would be spent on taxes, KS fees and physical reward stuff. So let's say to do another game at this level, they'd need maybe $500,000. They had 15,623 backers on this according to KS, plus whatever more on other platforms - so they'd only have to move a little over 25,000 copies of this game at full price to raise that budget. It could be done, given their popularity. That's a total, though, of over 40,000+ folks to buy a retro adventure game - it does have the advantage of being available on Steam (windows, Mac & Linux) and Xbox at launch. It'll be interesting to see how this sells.


Bt

 

[Ovplain]

I want to play this but those bloated heads scare me. Why the big giant heads exactly?

 

[Ivan]

that's your fear? big heads?

 

[J_C]

I want to play this but those bloated heads scare me. Why the big giant heads exactly?

Maybe they thought it is easier to express emotions when you have bigger, more detailed pixel art.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Hey, at least it's not a "Thanks Josh" big heads mode.

 

[Astral Rag]

I want to play this but those bloated heads scare me. Why the big giant heads exactly?

The game is a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and in that game Winnick gave each character a large head made of three stacked sprites to make them more easily recognizable.



MM is a MultiColor game (160*200 pixels/16 colors)

 

[Great Deceiver]

Characters have similar proportions to the first Maniac Mansion:

I'm sure that was the main inspiration and the reason why they look the way they do in Thimbleweed Park.

edit: dammit Astral Rag

 

[BlackGoat]

Jesus christ

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/31/everything-wrong-with-thimbleweed-park/

Everything wrong with the first three minutes of Thimbleweed Park
John Walker on March 31st, 2017 at 8:08 pm.

My very first interaction in Thimbleweed Park [official site], and most likely anyone else’s, was to “Look at Willie.” I don’t know who I’m playing yet, nor who Willie might be, but my German accented chap has appeared on a screen with two interactive items: a gate, and a slumped drunken man called Willie. So I looked at him, he being potentially more interesting than a gate, presuming that my character would inform me that either he knew this man and needed to speak to him, or that he did not. I got neither. Because “Look at Willie” speaks to him.

The classic adventure games were classic for a reason. It wasn’t just the stunning animations, background art, and hilarious writing. They were crucial, but it was more than that. It was about a level of care that went in to making sure things worked. When I hark back to those formative early 90s, it’s not with blinded nostalgia – games I enjoyed playing were so often enjoyed despite themselves. I loved Police Quest 3, but good grief, what a scrappy mess it was. I devoured all of Westwood’s half-arsed wannabes too, complete with all their dead ends, dialogue mistakes, and weak puzzles. But I don’t pretend they were perfect. However, a couple actually were. And when people attempt to make games inspired by (or scarequoted “inspired by”, as we say when we don’t want to open ourselves to litigious responses from people who just copied) that era, it’s my expectation that they not repeat the litany of issues that plagued the genre back then, but mimic the best of them.

Now, this isn’t new to adventures. My opening complaint is one of the most tiresome tropes of the genre, in fact, achingly familiar to anyone who’s played them all their life. And hey, let’s be fair, as the genre slips further and further from anything anyone actually wants it to be, even having “Look at” as an option is becoming a rare treat. (Yeah Broken Age, you half-finished anticlimax, I’m looking at you.) But when it’s there, and it’s the first interaction in the game, and when looking at someone to get the player character’s information makes complete sense, it’s really bloody annoying that it just overrides your choice.

“Push Willie” also talks to him.

For fuck’s sake.

So I exhaust the conversation options with this sprite, until he falls asleep, presuming I’m now tasked with getting him whiskey before he’ll talk. Whoever he is. Whatever he might Look like. I go through the gate. Then think, hmmm…

“Look at gate.”

“It is a gate to the trail above. I just came down from there.”

You have to be kidding me. I can look at a gate, and be informed not anything useful about what it looks like beyond what I can make out in the murky pixels, but am instead told of literally the only thing that’s happened in the game so far. In case, I presume, I had a severe head injury from my frustration at not being able to look at the drunk guy. Whatever, I walk right onto the next screen.

There’s a pretty sunset/rise, purple metal bridge dark across the colour gradients of the sky, and a rippling pool reflecting the last/start of the sun’s light. And in the water is a rock. I’ll look at that.

“I wonder if I can use this rock to put out the light.”

And wow. In two screens it commits the two most wearying crimes of point-and-click adventures. It hasn’t written responses for obvious interaction choices, AND it has my character pondering solutions to puzzles it knows it’s yet to introduce.

There’s a sign to the left of the pool reading, “TRESTLE TRAIL 1.7”, with an arrow pointing to the left. That’s the path I just walked down, I didn’t need to immediately look closer at the sign as I could read it. Going back and looking again, there’s a light over it. Looking at the light I’m told it’s very bright (it isn’t), and touching it I’m told it’s too hot. Fine. The light isn’t doing anyone any harm, nothing wrong with that light. Except of course I have been bestowed with the knowledge that I, for reasons it knows I haven’t learned yet, want to put out the light.

There’s a reason. There’s a note in your inventory, an innocuous piece of paper that the game hasn’t mentioned, let alone suggested reading it is a matter of immediate urgency since it explains who you are and what you’re doing. There’s also a teddy bear pillow and a room key for a hotel you’re not in. The inventory, in this opening scene of the game, isn’t an obvious priority. Look at the note, see that step 3 is the turn out the light, and yes, the puzzle makes sense.

Of course you should look through your inventory. Of course. But oh dear god, script the game so that it knows whether the player’s looked at the note before declaring puzzle solutions! That’s just the most basic essential of adventure design. “Has player looked at note? If no, don’t talk about light.” And, you know, suggest that the scrap of paper is of some import at some point?

Look, you’re right, these aren’t the biggest deals in the world. These aren’t game-breaking bugs, nor issues worthy of a thousand word rant. Except, you know, maybe they are. Because I care. I really care, about adventure games, about the genre. I played text adventures from the age of four. I still parse the word “exam” to mean “look closely at something”, and as I approach my fifth decade it’s apparent that’s not going away. I played every single adventure my dad bought, borrowed or copied throughout my childhood, as they gained line drawings, interactive art, dropped their parser bar and grew their verbs, lost their verbs and gained their cursors, and then struggled through the next twenty years of their flailing attempts to stay relevant. I know how ordinary these issues are, I know how common they are, and I know I’ve enjoyed many an adventure game that has committed such enormities. But it doesn’t make it fine, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t stick in my craw.

And you know what, when it’s the guy who sodding invented the verb-based adventure format, the guy who kicked the whole LucasArts classics off, it matters even more. I want this game to demonstrate to me that it cares too. When it bounces from one mortal sin to another in the first three minutes, it really feels like it doesn’t.

No, this isn’t our review. Adam wrote that, and he adored the game. He’s been enthusing about it all day on Twitter too. That’s our review. I am absolutely not saying this is a bad game, because I’ve literally played three minutes of it. I am in no position to form an opinion about the overall game. But I am in a position to rage about these constant bugbears, and how infuriating it is to see them occur immediately upon starting the game.

I want a game that cares about whether it declares solutions to puzzles that haven’t been introduced, a game that cares about the very first thing a player is most likely to do when playing. That matters! It can’t just be me who thinks so.

Oh, and when I looked at the rock, he fucking picked it up.

 

[Great Deceiver]

It's true though, as much as I hate to agree with anything out of RPS. I greatly enjoyed all of the possible interactions in old adventure games, even the most absurd shit would have personalized lines (Legend was especially good at this). Unlikely combinations were rewarded with witty responses.

Thimbleweed's interactions are more simplified, even though the verbs are there, most don't do anything. For instance, "push" is the same as "use" (and it could be in some contexts in the old games, but not always).

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Lame complaint. The point is, the character know about his notes. And therefore, he knows he has to break the light. he fucking wrote it. I remember the adventure game Runaway: A road adventure, which was scripted in this way that you could only get and use items if you knew you'd need it. Like there's a fire extinguisher you can't pick up before you see there's a fire. It was horrible gameplay design...

And he lies about looking at the rock picks it up...

EDIT:

While testing the above, I just restarted a new game, and noticed the hotel room number in the card is diferent than my normal playthrough...

 

[Gord]

Oh yeah, righteous nerd rage, because someone has to stick it to the man, or something...

 

[Lord Rocket]

This is something I noticed in the gameplay and preview videos, that there was a too much 4th wall meta commentary about death, dead-ends, Sierra games, and so on. Ron Gilbert complains about these things in almost all of his interviews as well.

I've played a bit more now and they seem to have confined their thoughts on this matter to the opening scenes, and there hasn't been nearly as much 4th wall stuff since then either. I think they wanted to let players know that they can wander around safely, but were just extremely clumsy about it (especially considering the total victory of LucasArts design over the Sierra style... has there even been a Sierra type game released recently? As in, this decade?).

It actually would have been funny if they'd come down on the pro-Sierra side of the argument.

 

[imweasel]

Hey Infagitron, I have now sold my Steam key from Kickstarter on Ebay and downloaded the 100% free version from the high seas... Does that trigger you and your libshit commie friends, who actively support raging liberal lunatics like Ron Gilbert?

Great game BTW. Even better that I got it for free.

 

[Aeschylus]

Great game BTW. Even better that I got it for free.

No matter what you do, or how many of his games you pirate, the filthy liberals will always still have your money.

On an actual related topic, the game looks great, though I won't be able to play it for a few weeks, sigh. I suspect Gilbert's name will be enough to propel it to the sales needed to make a profit as long as the game itself continues getting positive press.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i came here to ask if this game is gud

i noticed john walker being his typical retarded self

john walker acting like a retard about it is as good of a recommendation as any

 

[Infinitron]

(especially considering the total victory of LucasArts design over the Sierra style... has there even been a Sierra type game released recently? As in, this decade?)

if you mean hybrids, then Heroine's Quest, Quest for Infamy, Order of the Thorne

if you mean Gabriel Knightesque games, then Gray Matter and Kathy Rain come to mind

also nu-King's Quest lmao
no one will ever give a fuck to replicate the authentic King's Quest formula because it was always bad

Order of the Thorne is not a hybrid

 

[Gord]

i came here to ask if this game is gud

Wouldn't bother if I was you, you probably won't like it.

Everyone else can probably buy.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I'm playing it right now - it's pretty good. I'm about two hours into it and have had a few good laughs and, for the first time in as long as I can remember, have an urge to continue playing a game. That's as high praise as it gets. The in-jokes are getting a bit old, but still worth a smirk.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/options_options

Options

As promised, here are some of the options you can set in Thimbleweed Park.

First, you need to find the Prefs.json file.

Mac: ~Library/Application Support/Terrible Toybox/Thimbleweed Park
Windows: AppData\Roaming\Terrible Toybox\Thimbleweed Park
Linux: ~/.local/share/applications/Terrible Toybox/Thimbleweed Park

Most of these are just debugging, so don't complain (haha... don't complain... who am I kidding) about them giving you weird results, these are not meant for mere mortals, which is why they are not on the options menu.

Can the window be resized when in windowed mode. Since we use nearest neighbor scaling, this can produce ugly result. If things get goofy with the windows, go into Prefs and delete all the entries that start with "window" to return back to the default.

windowResizeable: 0


Amount of wiggle when mousing over the verbs, 0 = none

verbWiggle: 1


Amount of wiggle when mousing over the dialog lines

dialogWiggle:1


Turns on pixel perfect mode. It hasn't been tested very well, so it might cause issues. I'm sure it could be better, but we ran out of time. Remember, this is only the game scene, not the UI.

pixelPerfect: 0


Number of times to "pop" the inventory when adding an object.

inventoryPopCount: 5


Holding down the TAB key will show you hot spots. It's not 100% accurate and might show false positives or false negatives.

hotspotCheater: 0


When the verb or dialog is on screen, how transparent is the background.

uiBackingAlpha: 0.33


Alternate location for save files (like dropbox). You have to use /, even on windows. If you save them in dangerous places, it's all your fault. Applications that are sandboxed may not allow the saves to this location.

savePath: "/path/path/"


Show the system cursor.

systemCursor: 0


For key mapping, you can only use lowercase, as it won't see the shift key. You can also use numbers without quotes for scan codes. Some international keyboards map keys oddly. The only key you can't remap is "o", since it beings up options. I'm changing o to control-o for options in the next patch, then you will be able to.

keySelect1: "1"
keySelect2: "2"
keySelect3: "3"
keySelect4: "4"
keySelect5: "5"
keyOpen: "q"
keyClose: "a"
keyGiveTo: "z"
keyPickup: "w"
keyLookAt: "s"
keyTalkTo: "x"
keyPush: "e"
keyPull: "d"
keyUse: "c"


There are a lot more options, but most of them are for debugging and have no effect on a release build. If there is something I missed, let me know, I might have forgot it.