Jake

You love to see it.

That was a great video, with a great ending. I didn’t really know where the video would conclude, but the way it did was awesome. Love that they actually interviewed a bunch of runners. The game going slightly faster because you hit escape during the high frame rate sparkles on the logo was an amazing detail. It’s surprising that they use ScummVM instead of DOSBox given that ScummVM is surely different from the original interpreter in a bunch of subtle ways, but I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as everyone has an agreed upon baseline. I wonder if Aaron Giles’ upcoming DREAMM will be of interest to these guys, as it’ll have ScummVM-like ease of access but will be running off original code instead of a rewritten interpreter?

👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤💛🖤🖤💛 🖤🖤🖤💛💛 💛🖤💛🖤🖤 🖤💚💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I love the way bright sunny daylight looks in Monkey Island 2. The way the light bounces and reflects is so satisfying and warm. Phatt Island town especially looks so good in its original painting. There’s also a little tiny hint of Day of the Tentacle in the “Library” sign.

My god 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤💚🖤🖤💚 🖤💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚💚🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

ahh that rules Yeah sometimes you can’t fight the it!! But I think there’s something to be said for thinking about adventure game design as traditional game design, where your choices as a designer can influence how players play your games. The way they think about the world, the cadence they explore. So often it’s assumed that anything but the SCUMM or Sierra default is bad because it hews from expectation or “what people like in these games,” and I worry that as a designer that can both be a trap (in that it causes you to fractally mine the same fans and their habits, which are the same starting design tropes) and as a designer it can get boring! Playing Thimbleweed I was mostly impressed with how fast everything moved, while not feeling like I was “skipping” anything. Playing Curse of Monkey Island today is a slog for me not because of the story or art (both of which I like), but because the AV of the game is SO HEAVY. Guybrush moves so slowly, transitions take forever, the wait between lines is long. The sets are so big and Guybrush is so slow that you don’t really want to walk anywhere so you skip it all with the double click on exits. I played the beginning of Voodoo Detectice this morning, and it looks fantastic, but navigating his office is so slow that you have a button to skip walking to hotspots. Thimbleweed definitely has the advantage of being abstract pixel art, but it moves. The seamlessness of it all does bump on my completionist tendencies, but the smoothness of Thimbleweed’s character movement and responsive interface, and the attempt at an intuitive smooth UI in Delores reminded me that there is still a lot of room for “game feel” in adventure game design, which is often ignored by designers because the status quo is verbs + a lot of very time-heavy animation (even telltale fell into this trap and they didn’t even have verbs - everything just takes for goddamn ever to do).

That interface looks great! That does sound like descriptive overkill but it’s also really fun. Love the way the sentence builds using the mouse interface. Is that from Icon Architect? I thought I wouldn’t like the Delores interface because at least in the abstract I like the feeling of always having all my verbs all the time. But I also like it when an adventure game is capable of having a snappy cadence without feeling like it’s condescending to me, and I think the Delores UI does a good job of that. I almost always left click on stuff, and then sometimes I have a hunch that there’s more to an object and right click, and find something there. Initially I wanted an indicator for when there was or wasn’t a right click menu but eventually got used to trusting the game and my curiosity. I wouldn’t want every point and click to work this way, but I like it as a concept, and am glad Ron’s experimenting.

🤔 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 💚🖤💛🖤💚 💚💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I mean, Dave Grossman helped make Tales. He was in charge of the writing and design department at the studio that made it. He’s probably aware of what’s in it. Yeah probably. It’s mostly standalone but has some post-game narrative stuff that could be a spoiler.

@KestrelPi have you played the free Delores Thimbleweed Park spin-off game? It was described as A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure started out as a prototype for Ron Gilbert’s new point-and-click adventure game engine and grew into a fun little game. It has a lot of thinking about simplifying and providing a contextually aware interface for point and click games. It’s two years old now but that means it’s probably a good representation of where Ron’s head was at when starting work on Return. Two years of development is a long time (and had Grossman join up, along with a whole team), so its probably not safe to assume “this is how it will be,” but Delores is definitely interesting. I had some knee jerk responses to the UI when I first started playing, but it’s very thoughtful and grew on me pretty quickly.

Whew 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 💛🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💛🖤🖤 💚💚🖤💛🖤 💚💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I have a 91 Gousha atlas but unfortunately it is the “new edition” which means the graphic design has changed. I know the 88 is missing some roads so it’s the wrong edition, but it’s the only one I’ve found that is available for sale so I picked one up off eBay. My guess is 89 or 90 is truly correct, since they seem to come before the “NEW DELUXE 1991” redesign, but I haven’t found them for sale yet. Fortunately these are all staple bound and will be easy to scan.

The way that one samples Murray repeatedly saying "Ron Gilbert..." "Ron Gilbert... told.. me" is baffling. Wouldn't be MI fan art without weird choices though. This one showed up a couple weeks after the trailer and made me happy. Also theres this, which showed up early too:

I think it might be better to just let multiple Return subthreads branch out in the main forum for now, and then create a sub forum once people want to cordon off spoilers? (Only suggesting that option to avoid having to split things TWICE once spoiler time hits.)

I'm happy to chip in for that map. If anyone else joins, hooray! If not, DM me anyway.

It’s true 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛🖤💛 💛💛🖤🖤💚 🖤💛💚🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

😎

DREAMM is very exciting!

It looks good!

I would not overthink it, and play them in the order they were made! This color is a little dark but is otherwise exactly what I wanted the Tales of MI logo to look like, but LucasArts wouldn’t let us at the time, because it was the “old school” logo and didn’t reflect the current state of the brand. I was pretty sad that as a result it wasn’t allowed to match the rest of the series (other than the special editions). Makes me happy to see this again.

👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤💛🖤 💚🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚💛💛🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I really like Thimbleweed Park. It’s one of the few games I’ve played since Monkey 1 and 2 that have the same nebulous feeling of “something dark and unknowable lies beneath the surface,” that slowly seeps into the game the more I played, which I guess means that’s a Ron thing.

My Thimbleweed Park confession is, before I started playing I flipped the switch in settings for fewer injokes. I have no regrets. (There we’re still plenty of injokes but it felt like a normal amount for the type of story it was telling; I have no idea what I might have “missed out on,” and don’t even want to know, because the experience felt plenty complete without whatever I disabled with that checkbox.)

Yeah I think that you can print directly on paperboard or, “casewrapped” where the art is printed on adhesive paper that is wrapped over the paperboard. I don’t think either of those necessarily implies the folds you see in some boxes vs others, but I’m not sure. apologies if I got any of that wrong

I’ve recently heard the ones with the full lift-off lid referred to as “board game” style boxes, which makes sense! I’ve started using that as my mental shorthand for them.