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

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Well, the story/atmosphere/writing in Primordia are much better, but overall the puzzle design is a fair bit better in Thimbleweed Park (sorry MRY, but it's true), so it sort of depends what you're looking for in an adventure game. There have been other PnC adventures in recent years that have been in the same echelon, though (Journey Down, Chaos on Deponia, Memoria).
No apology needed! I myself have said many times that the puzzle design in Primordia (and in contemporary adventure games generally) is quite weak, so I'm flattered to come out ahead of Thimbleweed Park on any metric. That said, it's weird to hear The Journey Down invoked as having puzzles "in the same echelon" as Thimbleweed Park -- at least when I played it, TJD had ridiculous basic (either A-on-B or Tower of Hanoi) puzzles that were also generally quite easy. It had great art and fun music, though!
 

Sizzle

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Are the new Sam 'n Max games any good ?

They vary in quality a lot: some episodes are better than others, a lot of reused locations and assets, generally easy puzzles, some irritating characters.

But they can also be funny, fun to play, and some situations and puzzles that stem from them can be interesting.
 

HeatEXTEND

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Are the new Sam 'n Max games any good ?

They vary in quality a lot: some episodes are better than others, a lot of reused locations and assets, generally easy puzzles, some irritating characters.

But they can also be funny, fun to play, and some situations and puzzles that stem from them can be interesting.

Summersale here I come :]
wow, that was easy :D
 

Aeschylus

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Well, the story/atmosphere/writing in Primordia are much better, but overall the puzzle design is a fair bit better in Thimbleweed Park (sorry MRY, but it's true), so it sort of depends what you're looking for in an adventure game. There have been other PnC adventures in recent years that have been in the same echelon, though (Journey Down, Chaos on Deponia, Memoria).
No apology needed! I myself have said many times that the puzzle design in Primordia (and in contemporary adventure games generally) is quite weak, so I'm flattered to come out ahead of Thimbleweed Park on any metric. That said, it's weird to hear The Journey Down invoked as having puzzles "in the same echelon" as Thimbleweed Park -- at least when I played it, TJD had ridiculous basic (either A-on-B or Tower of Hanoi) puzzles that were also generally quite easy. It had great art and fun music, though!
TJD did not have puzzles in the same echelon (though Chapter 2 had a lot more interesting puzzle design). I merely meant that the game as a whole was, to me, on the same level as that group of games.

Gotcha, better then thimbleweed as a re-do or worse ? Last inquiry I promise :]
Worse puzzle design, probably a bit funnier on the whole. They're enjoyable but not particularly memorable. So I'd say TWP is better.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I always cite TJD as an example of the sad fate of adventure game puzzle design -- other than its puzzles and relatively small size, it's pretty clearly comparable to the classics. (Though the writing might be slightly worse.) I think Primordia has considerably more rough edges (the sprites, the audio quality) though probably somewhat better puzzles that TJD.
 

Tigranes

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Finally played, and finished this.

In general, what a nice little adventure game. Nothing about it was so memorable as, say, the opening to Grim Fandango, but it was all round a solid performance. It's a pity Reyes and Dolores are such bores, but Ransome, Ray and Franklin were alright, and there were some cool schticks like with the Sheriff.

I didn't understand what everybody was complaining about re. 4th wall, I didn't think it was too bad, until dear god the main plot / finale. How retarded. Not even because of the 4th wall / meta-genre reference stuff, just from a storytelling POV it's straight up piece of shit twelve year old fan fiction stuff. I liked the whole small town backwater America vibe, why did the shitty AI/robots/shit have to be in there at all?
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Finally played, and finished this.

In general, what a nice little adventure game. Nothing about it was so memorable as, say, the opening to Grim Fandango, but it was all round a solid performance. It's a pity Reyes and Dolores are such bores, but Ransome, Ray and Franklin were alright, and there were some cool schticks like with the Sheriff.

I didn't understand what everybody was complaining about re. 4th wall, I didn't think it was too bad, until dear god the main plot / finale. How retarded. Not even because of the 4th wall / meta-genre reference stuff, just from a storytelling POV it's straight up piece of shit twelve year old fan fiction stuff. I liked the whole small town backwater America vibe, why did the shitty AI/robots/shit have to be in there at all?
the plot twist is the lamest of all yes. Fucking it could be nice weirdo mystery thing like some stranger things esque story but ron gilbert just have to monkey island 2 it.

Like i said, ron gilbert probably is wanting to do this since monkey island 3 and it got held in a 20+ years and decided to cum it all on us with this game.

Hell in 80 and 90s this might be cool new edgy thing to do, but this is literally 2017 and that kind of 4th wall breaking is tired and often not done well.

Sad because theu nailed the atmosphere with this wacky yet still creepy setting with characters that arr also both zany and eerie
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I did not mind the ending in itself ; it's the storytelling leading up to it that is incredibly broken. All characters drop their initial motivation without warning, the murder stays unresolved, everyone has to act together but they are not compelled to in any way, etc.

They even missed some obvious points they could have made while going for that very same ending ! For example :

a few characters HAVE to interact with Franklin to solve some of their own puzzles, yet Franklin is invisible and unknown to said characters. This doesn't make any sense and could actually be a hint towards the ending but it is unexplored further.

SAD.
 

Boleskine

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https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/hints_and_dialogs

Dialogs, Hints and more...
avatar_ron.png

by Ron Gilbert
Jun 20, 2017
There is a new Thimbleweed Park update (Build 1388.918) that includes two major additions and several minor ones. This build should be live on Steam and will be live on GOG in the next 24 hours. Due to approvals and reviews, it will be a few weeks before it makes it to the App Store and Xbox.

ray_ransome_dialog.png

The first big change is player character dialogs. You can now TALK TO Delores, Ray, Reyes and Ransome. There was no point in adding Franklin dialogs, since you can't really talk to him, and he had one-sided stubs for trying to talk to other players.

This was something I attempted during initial production but abandoned due to me being unable to think about it as anything more than an a overly complex hint system. It always felt to me that all you'd want to do was talk to the other characters and get hints, and the early iterations of the system really showed that, so I abandon it. Time was also getting short and there was a lot of work to be done, so it wasn't matter of me writing player dialogs or hanging out at the beach.

This turned out to be a mistake. I should have pressed forward and implemented this.

Allowing the characters to talk to each other actually solved a bunch of problems. It was crystal clear (in our heads) why they were working together (or didn't care if they were), but that wasn't clear to players. This is especially true with Ransome. Ransome is an asshole. Why would he be helping?

Player character dialogs solved this problem. You now can chat amongst yourselves while spouting plot clarifying lines. If I had a few extra months I would have made them ever more complex, but maybe they don't need to be. I'm sure someone will complain that they didn't talk about X and that is plot critical. Maybe. Maybe not. I do think the dialogs help tremendously and I regret not pushing forward and implementing them from the get-go.

The other slightly related feature we implement was greetings. When Ray walks by Delores, she will say a quick one line greeting, same for Reyes, Ransome and Delores. None of these are plot revealing, but do make the world feel more alive and real.

The biggest change was a new in-game hint system. I know this will cause the hardcore adventure gamer's blood to boil (as it does mine), but the lack of hints was widely criticized by some of the more casual press. As we move to new and more casual platforms like iOS and Android, this becomes increasingly important. I guess it's a sad fact about not only modern gamers, but older gamers that just don't have 18 hours to spend on a game.

The first (failed) iteration of the design was based around a new object called the "HintTron 3000™". You would find it alongside the road and pick it up. You could then use it on any object in the game and it would give you a context appropriate hint.

On paper, it seemed like a good idea, until the first implementation and the problems came roaring out. The biggest problem was when you're stuck it's often at a conceptual level and you don't even know what object to click on. This could cause players to randomly click on stuff, hoping the get a hint with no real idea what they needed.

To stop non-stop hint-clicking, we added some friction in the form of a "cooldown", but it felt artificial and frustrating. We thought about adding a "currency" you find or earn (specks of dust), but these all ran into the issue os rarity and frustration when you can't find or earn them and you need a hint.

So we abandon the idea. David wrote a lot of code for this... so... a moment of silence.

To me, the most important part of any in-game hint system is making sure it felt like part of the world and game. I didn't want to do a hint system that was all UI based.

Back in the 80s, we had hint books with red gel, but we also had phone in hint lines.

hint_flyer.png

Thimbleweed Park already has a working phone, so it seem natural to just have a hint line number you could call and get a hint.

We once again toyed with the idea of a currency. You're using a phone, so finding money to use it made sense, but unfortunately, the phone is needed for other things and we didn't want to muck up all that with making them all pay phones, plus some of the phones are in the mansion and hotel. We beat it around for a bit, then just decided to making the hint line "free" to use.

Calling the phone provides some natural friction, in that you'd have to get to a phone (or switch to whoever had the cel phone) and make a call and trip down a hint tree.

The advantage we had over a true 80s hint line was that we know the context of where you are in the game, so the hint line can be smart and focus down to hints we know you might needed, and ignore spoilers and other distractions.

Jenn volunteered to take on the job, and we based it (with permission) on the existing online hints of Meghann O'Neill, so we had a good starting place. It's a nice system and hopefully newer players find it fun and helpful.

Now, we know it's not going to be for everyone, but it is 100% optional in that you just don't call it. But I know one's willpower can be weak. If you set...

hintsEnabled: 0
When you call the hint line, the phone will just ring and ring.

One tricky issue is old save games. To fully implement the AI of the hintTron, we had to add some new variables to track game state. If you load an old savegame, those variables don't exist. Jenn wrote some fancy code to try and predict an old savegame's state. It works 90% of the time, but if you load old games, hints might not be 100% accurate.

And lastly, I implemented some new keyboard commands.

1-6 will now selected dialog choices or they can be reassigned using...

keyChoice1: "1"
keyChoice2: "2"
keyChoice3: "3"
keyChoice4: "4"
keyChoice5: "5"
keyChoice6: "6"
You can assign keys to cycle through characters using...

keySelectNext: "0"
keySelectPrev: "9"
You can now disable initing of the controller by adding...

disableController: 1
There we more keyboard commands (like the numpad) that I ran out of time, but I'll save those for another update... because god knows, I can't stop working on this fucking game.

That arcade machines will make it into the next major update, probably when iOS and Android are released.

Come talk about it on the Official Thimbleweed Park Forums.

- Ron
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...new-classic-point-and-click-adv/posts/1919408

BIG Patch-a-reno & Sneak Peek-a-boo

Hello Backer-a-renos!

Have you been putting off finishing Thimbleweed Park because you got stuck? Did it bother you that the playable characters couldn’t talk to each other?

Well, we’ve got news for you! We just released a massive Steam update patch that addresses both of these issues!

In-Game Hint Line
7960fedeb82821e97eea05166cd66616_original.gif

Get free hints without leaving the game!

You may remember those 1-900 numbers you could call when you were desperately stuck in an adventure game... We’ve brought back this classic feature with the fully automated HintTron 3000™. Dial 4468 (HINT) from any in-game phone to get context-sensitive hints for the part where you’re stuck. Luckily the HintTron 3000™ is absolutely free -- no outrageous phone bills from MMucasFlem!

New Conversations
6d4af2e2614ccf2e3bbdf4b0d023bf99_original.gif

New dialog and conversations with playable characters!

Playing Thimbleweed Park, did you notice that the playable characters never really talk to each other? If you thought that was strange, you're not alone... in fact, enough people pointed it out that we decided to fix it! Thimbleweed Park’s lead actors recently returned to the studio to record a bunch of new conversations amongst themselves. Now when two playable characters are sharing the screen, they can talk to each other instead of awkwardly standing around.

Tell Your Friends, Pretty Please
One of the great things about Kickstarter is reaching the most hardcore fans from the very beginning. One of the less good things about Kickstarter is that our most hardcore fans bought the game before it even launched. Now we have to spread the word out to people who aren't huge adventure game fans and need a little more convincing that Thimbleweed Park is the game for them. With these updates Thimbleweed Park is now more accessible to all ability levels, including new adventurers, out-of-practice veterans and people who have other things to do in their lives than hit their tuna heads against a wall. And as an added bonus, it's on sale on Steam right now for 20% off. Please tell your friends!

*End shameless promotional spiel*

Backer Rewards Update
We haven’t forgotten about the physical rewards and the PDF art book. We’ve been super busy locking all of them down. Here’s a sneak peek at what the art book will look like.

ad25f6a01669286630965515955aa568_original.jpg

Sneak peek at hard cover for Thimbleweed Park: Art Book

We’re putting in orders now, but it’s still a few months away before these goodies will be in your hot little hands. Rest assured, it will happen. If you ordered any physical rewards, make sure you log in to PledgeManager and check your order is locked so we count you up as we’re making orders with the factory. We’ll be sending out reminders to check your postal address right before we ship rewards. If you have any issues logging in to PledgeManager, get in touch with support (support@thimbleweedpark.com).
 

Jugashvili

管官的官
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Codex 2013
everyone has to act together but they are not compelled to in any way, etc.

This is what got to me the most and what I feel was most harmful to the overall game design. I could get the FBI spook duo working together and could handwave some of the IMMERSHUN-breaking stuff (like one agent being aware of what an NPC needed or wanted even though the NPC had actually only talked to the other agent), but then all of a sudden you've got five telepathic, unrelated characters working together under the influence of the hivemind for no sensible reason whatsoever other than the player's meta knowledge. And yeah, I get it,
their whole world is a vidya gaem blah blah
but at least it should be internally consistent. Why on Earth would
Delores travel to the circus to help Ransome jump on the trampoline
? Why would
Ransome participate in a contest to get a record so that he can give it to someone else and then three different people can go sabotage the radio in sync while Reyes gets his watch repaired by Willie
? It's just poor design and bad writing, especially compared to stuff like the Monkey Island games which didn't have such glaring holes (despite also hinting at the fact that it's all a
children's game magic spell dream theme park ride
).
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...new-classic-point-and-click-adv/posts/1945364

It's about time for: PHYSICAL REWARDS!!!

Dear esteemed physical reward backer:

The day you’ve all been waiting for is upon us. We’re putting all the final touches on the physical rewards for Thimbleweed Park, this includes the art book, posters, boxes, t-shirts and more.

It’s now time to play your part. Don’t panic, it’s quite simple.

If you’re getting a physical reward, you need to go into PledgeManager and make sure your physical address is current and up-to-date. If it’s not, some jerk living at your old address is going to get your totally awesome art book and he probably won’t give it back because it’s so cool.

https://terribletoybox.pledgemanager.com/projects/thimbleweed-park-ks/

Don’t let that happen. It needs to be done by Tuesday 15th August.

Let me say that again:

It needs to be done by Tuesday 15th August.

Check and update your physical address in PledgeManager. Don't update your Kickstarter address, this MUST be done in PledgeManager.

Time is running out.

If you didn't back at a level where you're getting a physical reward, you don't need to do anything. Some of these items (unsigned and slightly less cool) might be available for purchase at a later date. Follow @thimbleweedpark for the latest news.

If you have any questions, or are having trouble with PledgeManager, please email support@thimbleweedpark.com

Gary and I now have several thousand posters and boxes to sign (this is just the posters!)

TeamThimbleweed
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
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Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
The worse thing about the trailer is not the Nintendo Switch, but the fact that it hints at a story that ultimately doesn't matter.

"Let's set the setting, story, and characters, and then not give a shit about it." seems to have been the writing process of this (otherwise excellent) game. I know you can't really do anything else than a story trailer for an adventure game, but this is deceptive as fuck.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,107
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...new-classic-point-and-click-adv/posts/1967232

Urgent Message about Physical Reward-a-renos

If you backed for less than $150, ignore this email!

Hello patient Backer-a-renos!

We thought we'd worked out everything that was needed for shipping your physical rewards out to you and so we pestered you about updating your address in PledgeManager.

Unfortunately... there's still one more step to go.

We're using the wonderful people at Fangamer to help us design, make and ship all the physical rewards to you all. In order to set up the system to guarantee you'll get your items, they need you to confirm your address one more time!

So... on August 21st (Monday) you'll receive an email from Fangamer. Click on all the buttons they ask you to and confirm your postal address.

Fangamer will start shipping out rewards starting the week of 28th August. The sooner you click to confirm your address, the sooner you'll get your rewards.

You shouldn't need to get in touch with us at all about this, but if you don't get an email from Fangamer by 23rd August, get in touch with us using support@thimbleweedpark.com

You ONLY need to do this if you backed at $150 or more and are getting a physical reward.

Sneak peek of the box!!!

9946cd66795394f633342fc838fa0e64_original.png

An empty box! Can you guess how many goodies we're going to pack into these?
 

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