Astral Rag
Arcane
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- Feb 1, 2012
- Messages
- 7,771
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KickStarter Thimbleweed Park: A New Ron Gilbert Classic Point & Click Adventure
- Thread starter belated
- Start date
So excited to play this game (text only because the voice acting is atrocious)
MRY
Wormwood Studios
He has specifically said that he had a third act in mind for Monkey Island that he wasn't able to execute,* so I don't think it's totally crazy to seek out the IP. And in that same post he said: "The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned the IP."Yeah, no. Finish the fucking game and make another new IP after that.
do these developers understand that the reason we loved them so much in the first place was because of their innovation and originality?
(*Actually, I think that link is not to what I was thinking of, but I'm too lazy to dig up the right one. But it incidentally turned up this:
I wonder why he went back to them for TP?)
I actually had a chance to play this, and I chatted with both Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick for some time at PAX East - Ron was in a really good mood, and (hahah, almost uncharacteristically nice!!) he chatted with me at length about some of the really neat stuff in this. You really have to see the game in action to get the subtly of the graphics in engine - it LOOKS like pure pixel art, but the animation of, say, the grass is high-def and amazing, and it WORKS with the art... I am not doing it justice in explaining it, but it really made me smile as a developer. It made me wish we could do things like that in the future - the engine Ron's built is pretty amazing. Gary was also really cool to talk about the art with, and very open about it. Honestly, not much gets me excited these days because my misanthropy and cynicism is at an all time high lately, but this game looked really cool. I hope the end=product, total story, etc is just as awesome. I think it could be - it really makes me say that I think this will be the adventure game that would show "old timers" how to come back and do it, instead of other half-assed projects (with comparable budgets).
Bt
Bt
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Last 24 Hours!!!
These are your last 24 hours to back Thimbleweed Park and make an awesome game even awesomer.
In 24 hours we're shutting down all backing. Last 24 hours to get in Ransome's swear jar! Last 24 hours to get guilt absolution for pirating Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion! Last 24 hours to feel awesome about yourself!
If you want to upgrade your previous pledge, please contact support@terribletoybox.com
But please note... These are not pre-orders! If all you want to do is pre-order the game, wait until closer to release. We have not set the final price for the game and it could be less than our lowest tier. What you're doing is supporting and helping to make a great game. You're bringing joy and point-and-click adventures to the world. Can you really put a price on that?
You're also getting guilt absolution, but that is between you and your god.
- Ron
At least they're upfront about their pricing. Smart move.
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I finally gave in and backed it at the last minute. I'd been meaning to for some time but hadn't got round to it. The various videos look really good.
Only problem is that I'm at the 'guilt absolution' level which pardons my previous pirating sins. But I have no sins to pardon - I still have the boxed copies of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island lying around somewhere. I'm feeling far too saintly at the moment so I'll have to find another old Ron Gilbert game to pirate to restore proper balance.
Only problem is that I'm at the 'guilt absolution' level which pardons my previous pirating sins. But I have no sins to pardon - I still have the boxed copies of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island lying around somewhere. I'm feeling far too saintly at the moment so I'll have to find another old Ron Gilbert game to pirate to restore proper balance.
I am definitely interested to see how this game does post-release: what it sells for, how many copies it sells, the level of press, etc. It's no secret that adventure games (and by extention, me) have had a rough time as of late. Thimbleweed Park really is a nice looking game, to me anyway - when I played it at PAX East, I was very impressed by the amazing subtleties and effects they used in "low res" graphics, and while glances at screenshots make it look like a standard low-res adventure, there's some sophisticated animation going on in there that is more achieved through some amazing programming and engine design. (I, honestly, wish we had the capability, talent and foresight to be able to do more like that, but I gotta say - the engine Ron built from the ground up is technically amazing.)
The question is, lately, with Kickstarter/Crowdfunded games - have we milked our audience completely during the campaign? Is there a market after release? I'm really interested to see if Thimbleweed Park goes that way, or ends up selling more.
Bt
The question is, lately, with Kickstarter/Crowdfunded games - have we milked our audience completely during the campaign? Is there a market after release? I'm really interested to see if Thimbleweed Park goes that way, or ends up selling more.
Bt
I hope this sells better than Broken Age and its ilk, I want it to show those devs who promised to go back to the roots but produced mediocre modern shit instead that ACTUALLY going back to the roots works.
MRY
Wormwood Studios
I share that curiosity, but more than anything, what interests me is to see the puzzles and how people react to them. In my opinion, puzzle design has been basically godawful since the mid-90s (and was also often not very good prior to the early 90s). Very few adventure games* since then have had any puzzles beyond, "Give Item A to Person 1," "Combine Item A with Item B," and "Use Item A on Hotspot X" -- which, indeed, are all really the same puzzle structure -- and then UI-based logic puzzles (i.e., Tower of Hanoi type puzzles that can be well-integrated or absurd). (* I mean P&C adventures, not Myst-likes.) What is largely missing are puzzles like "study the environment and figure out the conditions under which to use Item A on Hotspot X" -- the more elaborate intersectional puzzles that are common in Monkey Island 2 and even Zack McCracken but basically entirely absent from every indie adventure game I've played in the past decade. Even commercial adventure games I've liked a lot (such as Broken Sword and The Longest Journey) only have A on B type puzzles.
My curiosities are:
(1) Can (and will) Ron Gilbert still design that kind of harder, more complicated puzzle? Signs point to yes, but Broken Age instills doubt.
(2) Can players engage with such puzzles at all? Even the A on B puzzle type seems to stump many players now, even players who seek out retro games. Hell, will I still enjoy them?
(3) If TP has real puzzles of the quality of classic adventure games, and people do respond well to them, what will that do to the indie adventure game market? See, many people think that adventure games lack hard puzzles because adventure designers are pandering to dumb players. That's not really true. To be sure, there are things you can do to make your game easier to traverse (limit the number of puzzles, limit the number of items, make hotspots large and obtrusive, remove fail states, include hints, limit backtracking, have a fast walking speed and/or fast travel, etc.) and there are things you can do to make your game to make your game more obstructed (the opposite of the prior list, more or less). But a more-obstructed game is not necessarily harder in an intelligent sense than a less-unobstructed game.
Intelligent puzzles (which generally also means challenging puzzles) are hard to construct. They require both some creative vision and a great deal of technical skill and experience. As I mentioned way back in my AdventureDex interview, I think puzzle design is where adventure games have suffered most. There are indie adventure games that look as good as the classics (such as The Journey Down or Daedelic's titles), I think there are adventure games with comparable or even better writing, though perhaps none to reach the same level of humor as the best LA games, and there are a few games (like Quest for Infamy) that have the same scope. But I can't think of a one that is remotely close to Monkey Island 2 or DOTT or even ZM in puzzle design. In my humble (and biased) opinion, that is not because adventure designers won't make such puzzles but because they can't make such puzzles. Which is unsurprising. In almost every instance, adventure games are driven (and designed) by a story-teller who probably has no experience making puzzles, and has been "sorted" into a lead position not based on his puzzle creativity but on his narrative creativity.
Fortunately for adventure designers, players are more or less ignorant of that kind of puzzle. Thus, in their mind the range of choices lies between extremely obstructive and unobstructive A on B puzzles, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, most players prefer fewer obstructions.** But if players (re)discovered intelligent puzzles, I wonder if their estimation of puzzles in, say, WEG titles would change. Right now, the most people seem to ask for is "fair" and "logical" puzzles that aren't "too hard" and don't involve "pixel hunting" -- that's pretty easy to satisfy. A demand for good puzzles might be impossible to satisfy.
(** IMO, even mediocre A on B puzzles are enormously important because they help develop the theme, offer room for interesting non-essential interactions (at a minimum, failure quips), and develop the association between the character and the player.)
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this game.
My curiosities are:
(1) Can (and will) Ron Gilbert still design that kind of harder, more complicated puzzle? Signs point to yes, but Broken Age instills doubt.
(2) Can players engage with such puzzles at all? Even the A on B puzzle type seems to stump many players now, even players who seek out retro games. Hell, will I still enjoy them?
(3) If TP has real puzzles of the quality of classic adventure games, and people do respond well to them, what will that do to the indie adventure game market? See, many people think that adventure games lack hard puzzles because adventure designers are pandering to dumb players. That's not really true. To be sure, there are things you can do to make your game easier to traverse (limit the number of puzzles, limit the number of items, make hotspots large and obtrusive, remove fail states, include hints, limit backtracking, have a fast walking speed and/or fast travel, etc.) and there are things you can do to make your game to make your game more obstructed (the opposite of the prior list, more or less). But a more-obstructed game is not necessarily harder in an intelligent sense than a less-unobstructed game.
Intelligent puzzles (which generally also means challenging puzzles) are hard to construct. They require both some creative vision and a great deal of technical skill and experience. As I mentioned way back in my AdventureDex interview, I think puzzle design is where adventure games have suffered most. There are indie adventure games that look as good as the classics (such as The Journey Down or Daedelic's titles), I think there are adventure games with comparable or even better writing, though perhaps none to reach the same level of humor as the best LA games, and there are a few games (like Quest for Infamy) that have the same scope. But I can't think of a one that is remotely close to Monkey Island 2 or DOTT or even ZM in puzzle design. In my humble (and biased) opinion, that is not because adventure designers won't make such puzzles but because they can't make such puzzles. Which is unsurprising. In almost every instance, adventure games are driven (and designed) by a story-teller who probably has no experience making puzzles, and has been "sorted" into a lead position not based on his puzzle creativity but on his narrative creativity.
Fortunately for adventure designers, players are more or less ignorant of that kind of puzzle. Thus, in their mind the range of choices lies between extremely obstructive and unobstructive A on B puzzles, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, most players prefer fewer obstructions.** But if players (re)discovered intelligent puzzles, I wonder if their estimation of puzzles in, say, WEG titles would change. Right now, the most people seem to ask for is "fair" and "logical" puzzles that aren't "too hard" and don't involve "pixel hunting" -- that's pretty easy to satisfy. A demand for good puzzles might be impossible to satisfy.
(** IMO, even mediocre A on B puzzles are enormously important because they help develop the theme, offer room for interesting non-essential interactions (at a minimum, failure quips), and develop the association between the character and the player.)
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this game.
Well, just accept that there will never, in the entire history of computer gaming, be an adventure game comparable to Monkey Island 2 again because that one is just god-tier, and you will sleep more peacefully.
...
...
MRY
Wormwood Studios
Scratch MI2, then. I can't think of a puzzle from a post-LA/Sierra adventure game as good as the airplane sequence in ZM. I'm straining to recall a game I played decades ago, but as I recall, you: (1) clogged a drain in the bathroom and left the faucet on to attract the stewardess; (2) opened the overhead bins to delay her return; and (3) pulled up a seat cushion to get an item beneath because the stewardess would otherwise not let you do so. The puzzle required you to observe the behavior of the stewardess in two respects (how she responded to the bathroom and how she responded to the overhead bins) and complete a timed task, and it did so more or less consistently with how objects should function (I don't believe airplane sinks ever had faucets you could leave on in my lifetime, but otherwise everything seemed right). My vivid recollection is that I figured out the goal first (I needed something under the seat cushion, I think), then figured out what I would need to do to get it (distract the stewardess), the discovered she was too fast and figured out that I had to delay her, then figured out how to do so.
I'll be happy if this game rises to ZM. :D
I recall some really good puzzles in Space Quest IV, too -- catching the energizer bunny, passing the lasers, escaping the terminator.
I'll be happy if this game rises to ZM. :D
I recall some really good puzzles in Space Quest IV, too -- catching the energizer bunny, passing the lasers, escaping the terminator.
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tuluse
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2008
- Messages
- 11,400
The Longest Journey was pretty shit on puzzle design, it was carried almost entirely on the strength of it's setting and tone (playing as April Ryan is just a delightful experience and the game was just so damned earnest it was like a subversion of the much more sarcastic LA and Sierra games).
That said, everyone should play the free (!) indie adventure game Donna of Blood. It's short, but good. Fair warning, it's NSFW.
That said, everyone should play the free (!) indie adventure game Donna of Blood. It's short, but good. Fair warning, it's NSFW.
MRY
Wormwood Studios
inb4 Infinitron
MRY
Wormwood Studios
Art is amazing. VO and text somewhat less amazing.
This looks so fucking SWEET! <3
Yeah, seriously, seeing the art and animation in person makes all the difference. That engine Ron Gilbert cooked up for it really makes me salivate. I wish I had that kind of tool to work with; it does low res looking graphics with higher-res functions easily, like parallax and smooth animations, zooms, etc. Good looking stuff.
Bt
Bt
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