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

[Cazzeris]

That Maniac Mansion's hamster...

 

[J_C]

Well, they listened to J_C's feedback and switched the IOS/Android and Voice acting stretch goals.

Ah, the Power of J_C! Now I can pledge for the game, I'm sure they will reach that stretch goal.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

there's the carnivore plant that also appeared in the presentation video.

 

[J_C]

Am I understand it correctly, and this game is really done by only 2 people, Gilbert and Winnick? It is pretty cool if it is. At least they can keep the costs to a minimum this way.

 

[mindx2]

Update #10:

#10
DATELINE - Update Town
Posted by Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick

Big retro news today. First off the presses is that Ken Macklin, who did the cover art for Maniac Mansion, has agreed to do the cover art for Thimbleweed Park. So, if you’re getting the box or poster, it will feature glorious Ken Kacklin art. We’re excited to be working with him again.

The second whammy for the day is that David Fox is going to be coming on to help with Thimbleweed Park scripting/programming and rodent-related gags. David Fox was the one who decided putting a hamster in a microwave would be a good idea in Maniac Mansion. Gary and I were aghast at the idea, but David insisted it was “comedy gold”. David did most of the SCUMM scripting in Maniac Mansion and would go on to create and design Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, the second Lucasfilm SCUMM game.

In unrelated retro news, it is now official that Thimbleweed Park will be available on Steam. Other online stores will probably be added later and a DRM free version will be available via Humble Bundle. If you download the DRM free version, you need to pinky-swear you won’t upload it to pirate sites. That’s all we ask.

Also a quick reminder that getting your name in the Thimbleweed Park phone book, and (optional) custom recorded voicemail message when the number is called, is a Kickstarter exclusive. Once the Kickstarter ends, this will not be offered again. Also, if you want a name of a family member to appear instead of yours, that’s a-ok with us.

And… other Kickstarters....

Congratulations to That Dragon Cancer for funding!

Please check out Rocket Ranger Reloaded - 1989 Golden Joystick Award-winning hero Rocket Ranger returns in a completely fresh new take on the classic action-adventure videogame!

Now… on to the Thimbleweed Park Talkie stretch goals...

Getting the box artist is pretty cool. I hope adding people, such as David Fox, doesn't start putting too many cooks in the kitchen. I firmly believe one major reason many beloved games of old were "classics" was the small teams they employed. Now, I have no idea how many people are already on this game so I'm not terribly concerned and the hamster thing was funny...

 

[taxalot]

Well, hopefully this can be disabled.

 

[buzz]

It can, he said it in a previous update.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's hardly the issue. The point is that it kills the scope of the game, as oasis said.

 

[Tramboi]

If it has the same "killed scope" than DOTT, FOA or Sam'n'Max, it would be ok for me...

 

[mindx2]

Update #11:

Final Week!

Final week of the Thimbleweed Park Kickstarter! It's been a wild ride and thanks so so much to all our backers and supporters!

Last chance to get your name in the Thimbleweed Park phone book and (if you want) record a custom voice mail message. Players far far into the future, playing Thimbleweed Park on emulators running on computers we can't even imagine yet, will read your name and hear your voice. That's a legacy that should cost way more than $50, but it doesn't!

And we're announcing that all the boxes will be signed by Gary and I.

As an added bonus... test your knowledge on five new upstanding members of the Thimbleweed Park community...

Looks like they'll easily make the "Talkies" goal.

There's something about this one that just feels better than Shafer's. Maybe it's just hindsight on knowing what Broken Age became but the subtle humor of this kickstarter just seems... funnier...and as if Gilbert seems much more grounded in his vision of the game...? I don't know, it's hard to pinpoint as I can't really put my finger on it (metaphorically speaking, of course!).

 

[MRY]

That's hardly the issue. The point is that it kills the scope of the game, as oasis said.

Maybe. I actually think there is a different, worse, problem, which is that it has a tendency to lock the text in place too early in the development process. Because recording, processing, cutting, implementing VO takes time, at some point you need to (mostly) freeze the text. A line here or there can be re-recorded, but you can't really do any significant late-development shifting the same way you can if there's no VO. In some games, that's not so much of a problem -- for example, there's little reason to change the VO in, say, Star Craft campaigns. But in adventure games, the tweaking often entails reworking puzzles, even adding or removing areas, and locked in VO makes that difficult. We had some problems along those lines with Primordia, though we recorded the VO late and there ultimately wasn't so much of it.

 

[mindx2]

That's hardly the issue. The point is that it kills the scope of the game, as oasis said.

Maybe. I actually think there is a different, worse, problem, which is that it has a tendency to lock the text in place too early in the development process. Because recording, processing, cutting, implementing VO takes time, at some point you need to (mostly) freeze the text. A line here or there can be re-recorded, but you can't really do any significant late-development shifting the same way you can if there's no VO. In some games, that's not so much of a problem -- for example, there's little reason to change the VO in, say, Star Craft campaigns. But in adventure games, the tweaking often entails reworking puzzles, even adding or removing areas, and locked in VO makes that difficult. We had some problems along those lines with Primordia, though we recorded the VO late and there ultimately wasn't so much of it.

I guess I don't see it as that much of an issue. Some of my favorite adventure games (DotT, Fate of Atlantis, The dig, etc.) were all voiced and added immensely to my enjoyment. As you said, as long as they wait until their text is complete it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[MRY]

Fate of Atlantis was "enhanced" with VO after the fact (that's true of most golden-age talkies), though not of DotT and The Dig.

The problem is that to really be certain that text is complete, you basically have to say, "We will have our final version of the game, lock it in, then send it to the studio to record the voice acting." (In fact, that is what happened with "enhanced" games lik FoA or Loom or whatever.) But no one is willing to do that because it adds months onto the development cycle. So instead what happens is that text lock has to happen sometime before the last rounds of testing. Sometimes (certainly in Primordia) those last rounds of testing reveal additional issues that implicate the writing. Depending on how the VO has been done, it may be impractical to record new lines. (It might be too expensive or the voice actors might not be available, especially if we're talking about either just tweaking one or two lines (each line will cost an unreasonable amount if you have to bring a pro actor into a studio for it) or adding something substantial.) The result is that there is a disposition toward not changing the writing, even when changing the writing would improve the gameplay or story.

One of Bioware's inspired moves with KOTOR (which they've used in later games too) was to have gibberish-speaking aliens who could always be used to add in dialogue late in the development cycle. But there's no real way to do that in a game like this.

Anyway, it's not an insuperable problem, and I like talkies, but I think it's a bigger problem than scope, since with the money they have, they'll have enough to record competent journeymen actors, but not enough to hire celebrity actors, which is exactly what you want. Even though celebrity actors can do really good jobs, they're not cost justified and probably not as good as non-celebrities who focus on voicework.

 

[tuluse]

By the way, the talkie version of Loom is worse than the non-talkie version. They had to edit the script down to fit all the voice work on a CD. A lot of the subtleties are lost.

(I also like how characters sounded in my head better than the voice actors, but I will say the actors did a good job).

 

[MRY]

Interesting. I played the non-talkie as a kid, but I remember loving the casette tape that came with it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

One of Bioware's inspired moves with KOTOR (which they've used in later games too) was to have gibberish-speaking aliens who could always be used to add in dialogue late in the development cycle. But there's no real way to do that in a game like this.

 

[Tramboi]

Or, even older:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwN3x8GzzFc
Both french games, seems we like gibberish...

Another approach that we will probably see come back in the next 30 years, synthesis :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3ieJWu0nkA

 

[felipepepe]

Uh guys, I'm pretty sure that he meant "can't be done" with human characters, not in graphical adventures...

 

[MRY]

With human characters in a non-fantasy setting. I guess you could have a character using a Stephen Hawking-esque voice synthesizer, but I'm not sure that provides quite the same flexibility, as it's only one character, as opposed to a whole class of characters you can throw into every area. I did suggest to Jay Tholen (the guy making Dropsy) that they could use grammalot in lieu of actual VO (Gobliins 2 seems a bit grammalotish).

 

[Tramboi]

I know. Just reminding the world how gorgeous 80s french scene was

But the way I don't think that voicing should prevent patching the dialogues afterwards. Players would understand that some text is not spoken but only displayed. Maybe not in Broken Age 3, but in most adventure games.

 

[MRY]

Hmm. I think without a conscious decision early on to voice only part of the dialogue (a la IE games) it is hard to have some, but not all, dialogue voiced, no matter how retro.

Actually, though, Resonance didn't voice the characters' thoughts (WEG's upcoming Technobabylon remake does the same thing). That would give some flexibility.

 

[Tramboi]

When you say this, it is the perfectionnist game developer speaking (I am one of those too).
But as a customer, I think AGS-style games could get away with this (a dozen non-voiced lines, or lines with text differing with what was recorded).
People watch movies with shitty subtitles on DVD all the time and they don't have the energy to complain or sue anybody.

 

[kaizoku]

Wasn't really looking forward into spending more money on KS so soon. But alas. Went with the 150$ tier.

I hope the box will look nice and fit well next to the Quest for Infamy's and Stasis' boxes.

Can't say the same about Primordia DVD box that WEG sent me :p
It deserved a proper box.
Maybe the next WWS game will have one.

 

[MRY]

At least the DVD inside the box worked.

Oh, wait.

 

[mindx2]

Update #12:

#12
Talkies™ Unlocked and Box Contents
Posted by Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick

The Talkies™ stretch goal was unlocked yesterday, but I was out running errands at IKEA so I didn't get to update immediately after. There was an incident where one line formed for two checkout registers, then someone said, “Hey, I’m going to start a second line” and then people in the long double line started to get upset, and I thought a fight was going to break out. Happy Holidays and Peace on Earth.

What does this have to do with Thimbleweed Park or Talkies™? Absolutely nothing, so let’s get on with the update!

Thimbleweed Park will now feature full voice! Best! Backers! Ever!

To answer a couple of questions that have come up: Yes, you will be able to turn the talkies off and just read the text. Yes, you will be able to display the text on screen while listening to the talkies. Yes, you can hide the text and just listen to the talkies. And, yes, you will be able to skip each line if you like hearing the voice, but read really fast. Back in the SCUMM days, the '.' key would end the current line and I plan on implementing that in Thimbleweed Park. It will cut off the audio, but that's OK because you’re in control.

Enjoy some concept art as a brief intermission in this update…

We also want to clarify some issues with the boxed version of the game. Sorry it’s taken a while to answer these questions, but Gary spent some time pricing things out so we knew what we're getting into.

▶︎ The box will be a full size old-school game box, not one of the small boxes that started coming out in the mid-90s. Those aren’t real boxes!

▶︎ The manual will be much like the one that shipped with the original Maniac Mansion.

▶︎ The game that comes on the CD will be DRM free. I don’t know all the details yet. I’ll need to spend some time down the road figuring it all out.

▶︎ There will be some fun “feelie” in the box. We don’t know what that is yet. We often didn’t know what those were until the end of the project.

Only hours left to get guilt absolution, secure you're name and voice in Thimbleweed Phone Book history, or get a lavishly signed collectors edition box.

Hours!

BOXESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.......................... FULL SIZED BOXESSSSSSSSSSSSSS..................... FULL SIZED SIGNED BOXESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS WITH FEELIESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS...............