Thimbleweed Park a spiritual sequel to Maniac Mansion (mild spoilers) I am surprised that the game is chalk full of MM references. I wasn't surprised that the game had references of the meteor (Wanted poster in Sheriff's office), but I was a bit surprised that Sandy and Dave are characters in the game. Thimbleweed Park is a wacky X-Files murder mystery packed with dad jokes By James Davenport video We chat with Ron Gilbert and David Fox about their modern take on classic adventure game design.

. Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One. March 30, 2017. PlayStation 4. August 22, 2017.

Nintendo Switch. September 21, 2017. iOS. September 19, 2017.

Android. October 3, 2017Mode(s)Thimbleweed Park is a developed by and for,. The game was revealed on November 18, 2014, along with a campaign with a goal of 375,000, and was released on March 30, 2017.The game is a to Gilbert and Winnick's previous games (1987) and (1990), and is designed to be similar to graphic adventure games released in that time period, both visually and gameplay-wise. Similarly to early graphic adventure games, the game features a verb list. The player characters are controlled by building sentences by clicking on verbs, characters and objects.The game is played similarly to early graphic adventure games; it is seen from a third person perspective, with a view of the area taking up the majority of the screen, while the bottom portion is taken up by the player's inventory and a list of verbs, such as 'use', 'pick up', and 'talk to'.

By clicking on a verb followed by one or two items or characters, the player character will attempt to perform the action described. An example given in the reveal trailer was 'Use balloon animal with corpse', performed by clicking on the verb 'use', the 'balloon animal' item in the player's inventory, and a corpse found in an area in the game.The game has five different player characters which the player can switch between in the middle of gameplay, similarly to. Plot agents Ray and Reyes arrive at the town of Thimbleweed Park to investigate a murder. Their investigation leads them to several: Chuck, the recently deceased owner of the PillowTronics robotics company; Ransome the Clown, cursed to wear his makeup forever after going too far in his insulting performances; Delores, computer programmer and niece of Chuck; and Delores's downtrodden father Franklin.Franklin attempts to pitch his business ideas to Chuck, but is murdered at the town hotel and becomes a ghost. Delores discovers that Chuck has written her out of his will, angered by her choice to pursue a career in video games. Ray and Reyes gather blood samples, fingerprints, and photographic evidence, and arrest vagrant Willie, who protests his innocence. They leave town, but return incognito to pursue other agendas: Ray has been tasked with stealing computer secrets, and Reyes wants to clear his father of causing the fire that burnt down the PillowTronics factory.Ray, Reyes, Delores and Ransome infiltrate the factory.

Delores disables the security systems and discovers that Chuck has uploaded his personality into the factory computer. Chuck reveals that everyone in the town is trapped inside a video game that keeps repeating, and that the group must free themselves by deleting the game.Ransome apologises to the citizens of Thimbleweed Park, clearing his reputation. Franklin says goodbye to his daughter and disappears to the afterlife. In the local paper, Reyes publishes a confession from Chuck clearing his father of blame for the factory fire.

Ray steals a from game designer and is transferred out of the game by her employers. Delores enters the 'wireframe world', a version of Thimbleweed Park with simplistic graphics, and shuts down the computer.Development On November 18, 2014, Gilbert posted an update to his blog, in which he revealed that talks about the game had begun 'several months ago' while he and Winnick had been discussing how fun their time developing Maniac Mansion at (Lucasfilm Games at the time) had been, and how they liked the 'charm, simplicity and innocence' of the adventure games of that era. Winnick proposed that they should make a new game in the style of their old ones; as such, it is designed as if it had been made in 1987 and as if it were 'an undiscovered you've never played before'. Gilbert agreed, and suggested that they should crowdfund it on.Development started with Gilbert and Winnick building the game's world and story, designing puzzles using puzzle dependency charts, and creating characters around the puzzles. From the start, Gilbert says, they wanted to parody the TV shows,. The game's production was planned to last for 18 months, with Gilbert programming, Winnick producing art, and both writing and designing. Six months into development, an additional artist and programmer was hired along with a part-time musician.

Development began on January 2, 2015. Crowdfunding A month-long crowdfunding campaign for the game was launched on Kickstarter on November 18, 2014, with a goal of 375,000; people who pledged at least $20 received a copy of the game. At the end of the campaign, on December 18, 2014, they had managed to raise US$626,250 from 15,623 people; they had also managed to reach a number of 'stretch goals', which would allow German, Spanish, French, and Italian of the game, full English voice acting, and ports to. The German localization is planned to be done by Boris Schneider-Johne, who was responsible for the German localization of Monkey Island.After the end of the campaign, there was a 14-day period of waiting for credit cards to clear; Gilbert and Winnick finally got access to the money on January 5, 2015. Kickstarter took a 5% cut, and, who handled the payments, took a 3–5% cut; this added up to $57,198 of fees.

Additionally, another $4,890 was deducted from the raised amount due to failed transactions; in the end, they had $564,162, plus around $8,000 from people who had pledged via.According to Gilbert, a lot of the failed transactions were from people who had problems with Amazon, and who then went on to pledge money via PayPal instead; because of this, he suggested that perhaps only half of the $4,890 had been lost. Budgeting was done around the money from Kickstarter, while the PayPal money was to be a safety net, or for potential added improvements to the game. Game engine and tools Gilbert had already started to look for adventure game in August 2014, but because of his experience of always wanting to modify engines to do exactly what he wants from them, he decided it would be easier to create his own engine. He already had a 2D graphics engine written in / that he had used for his non-adventure games The Big Big Castle!

And Scurvy Scallywags, which he decided to use for Thimbleweed Park; was used for handling window creation and input, while Gilbert's own was used for rendering the graphics. The only other thing that was needed for the engine was a scripting language; Gilbert had looked at, and while he considered it 'easy to integrate and highly optimized', he disliked its syntax. He considered making his own scripting language, but due to time concerns, he chose the language instead.Winnick mostly used.

According to Winnick, the style they were aiming for would lend itself very well to being drawn entirely digitally from the start. He drew the initial concepts and layouts as sketches.

Updates While the game was released on March 30, 2017, the developers have continuously released updates not only fixing problems but introducing various new gameplay elements. On the June 20, 2017 release, the characters became able to talk to one another (fully voice acted as the rest of the game), which became an inventive 'hint system' without explicitly offering specific hints to solve the puzzles. Apart from this there's a more classical hint system which includes calling the hint line using the phones available in the game, which offers context-sensitive help.Reception ReceptionAggregate scoreAggregatorScorePC: 84/100XONE: 84/100PS4: 86/100iOS: 83/100NS: 82/100Review scoresPublicationScore9/10(Recommended)8.5/108/108/10iOS:Thimbleweed Park was released to positive reviews from critics, the PC version garnering a rating of 84 out of a possible 100 on the website, based on 59 critics. Awards The game was nominated for 'Best Comedy Game' in 's 2017 Game of the Year Awards; for 'Best Mobile Game' in 's Game of the Year Awards 2017; and for 'Best Adventure Game' in 's 'Best of 2017 Awards'.

It won the award for 'Best Ending' in 's 2017 Game of the Year Awards. In ' Aggie Awards 2017, the game won the award each for 'Best Traditional Adventure' and 'Best Adventure of 2017, and also won the Reader's Choice Award each for 'Best Story', 'Best Writing - Comedy', 'Best Setting', 'Best Acting (Voice or Live Action)', and 'Best Sound Effects'; while it was a runner-up each for 'Best Character' with Delores Edmund (both original and Reader's Choice) and Ransome the Clown (Reader's Choice only), 'Best Concept' (Reader's Choice), 'Best Graphic Design', 'Best Animation', and 'Best Music'. YearAwardCategoryResultRef2017Best Indie GameNominated2018AwardsGame, Original AdventureNominatedWriting in a ComedyNominated. Retrieved 27 February 2017. Thimbleweed Park. December 31, 2014. Retrieved May 26, 2016.

^ Matulef, Jeffrey (November 18, 2014). Retrieved May 26, 2016. ^ Gilbert, Ron (November 18, 2014). Grumpy Gamer. Archived from on April 10, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2016.

Gilbert, Ron (January 2, 2015). Thimbleweed Park.

Retrieved May 26, 2016. ^ Gilbert, Ron (January 6, 2015). Thimbleweed Park. Retrieved May 26, 2016.

Gilbert, Ron (August 3, 2014). Grumpy Gamer. Retrieved May 26, 2016. ^ Gilbert, Ron (January 5, 2015). Thimbleweed Park.

Retrieved May 26, 2016. Winnick, Gary (January 7, 2015). Thimbleweed Park.

Funny farm jokes. The manager answered: 'Listen, all my life I'm cutting heads and dealing with shit, but now you ask me to make. At the end of the day the farmer saw that the manager was sitting in front of the potatoes bag, but the two boxes were empty.The farmer asked the manager: 'How is that you made such difficult jobs during the first days, and now you cannot do this simple job?' A and a are playing in a meadow. The farmer thought that to somebody coming from the city, working the whole life sitting in an office, it will take over a week to finish the job, but for his surprise the manager finished the job in less than one day.The next day the farmer gave to the manager a more difficult job: to cut the of 500 chickens. The farmer was sure that the manager will not be able to do the job, but at the end of the day the job was done.The next morning, as most of the jobs in the farm were done, the farmer asked the manager to divide a bag of potatoes in two boxes: one box with small potatoes, and one box with big potatoes.

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Retrieved January 11, 2018. February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 18, 2018. National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers.

March 13, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.External links. at.