Jake

🤔 👕 I beat #Mojole #245 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤💛🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚🖤🖤💛 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

👕 I beat #Mojole #244 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤💚🖤🖤 🖤💚💚🖤🖤 🖤💚💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I don’t either. Curse clearly loves that it takes place in a world of pirate pastiche inspired by Pirates of the Carribean and that part of Disneyland in general. I think the split realty part was what wasn’t liked.

👕 I beat #Mojole #243 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛💛🖤 💛💚💚🖤💛 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Anguish Eep ook ack! I failed at #Mojole #237. 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 💛💛🖤🖤💚 🖤💛💛💛💚 💛💚💚🖤🖤 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I’m working on my own arrangement very slowly because why not. But if you want a wav source of the leship arrangement let me know. (Thanks for including it 😎)

👕 I beat #Mojole #229 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤💛🖤💛 💛💚🖤💛💚 🖤💚💛🖤💛 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Guess the word within the number of tries given. The rules are the same as the NYT game Wordle, except the dictionary is expanded from the base Wordle dictionary of English words, to include a bunch of LucasArts specific ones. The rules are basically: The answer will always be LucasArts related You have six tries to guess the word Any letter you guess that is grey isn’t in the word Any letter you guess that is yellow IS in the word, but you’ve got it in the wrong place Any letter you guess that is green is in the word AND you’ve got it in the right place Because Remi made this version of the game it is sometimes troll-ish in its answers For example here’s todays: 👕 I beat #Mojole #227 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚🖤🖤💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/ My first guess was absolutely wrong. I tried a five letter word even though the instructions said it was a wildcard day and therefore the word was shorter. I did that because I knew the chances of guessing it right off were basically nil so I should try a first word with a spread of letters in it. Unfortunately none were in the word. My second guess, I got lucky and correctly pinned down the first letter AND another letter. From these I took a wild swing and got the word (there has been an ongoing theme ebbing and flowing through the words the last week or so which helped my guess in this case).

👕 I beat #Mojole #225 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 💛🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤🖤🖤💚🖤 🖤🖤🖤💚🖤 🖤💛💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

🤔🤔 👕 I beat #Mojole #221 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 💛🖤🖤💚💚 🖤💚💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

That Grim collectors edition is an amazing release. No notes. Happy to see the triangle box back even if it’s a little funky. Just awesome to see a weird shaped box again!

👕 I beat #Mojole #220 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 💚🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

👕 I beat #Mojole #218 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 💛🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤🖤💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Something being a satire or self aware doesn’t mean you as the audience shouldn’t or can’t feel genuine attachment to the characters. (I can’t tell if that is being argued or not but it’s sort of implied by @karmo. Apologies if I’m misreading what you were implying. This is more of a side thought than a direct response to anything!) I think Monkey Island 1 is definitely a send up of a bunch of pirate and adventure tropes, but it’s also a story where (for many players) the stakes end up feeling like they matter. You want guybrush to succeed and beat lechuck, for Guybrush and Elaine to get together (especially if you see their scene on the docks). The game being a send-up doesn’t mean you have to keep an ironic detachment from the characters; their wants and needs are genuine, they don’t know they’re in a send-up.* The Princess Bride is probably the cleanest example of this - even though the kid knows he’s being told a story, and even though the characters themselves seem to occasionally know they’re existing in a trope filled adventure story, everyone in all layers of the story and meta story are rooting for them to succeed in the end. *though Roger Rabbit rules do apply: they occasionally know they’re in a game but “only when it’s funny.”

✨👀✨ 👕 I beat #Mojole #217 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤🖤💛🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

It's awesome work. The new bread looks really seamless.

That’s a great read on it. I think it is the climax even if they don’t have a face to face fight. The two of them scrambling over a bunch of nonsense lore machinery to try and be the first one to the secret is the correct conflict for this story imo.

Logo is less readable now because the bread intersects the K all over the place! It makes sense why they covered it before for store shelf readability. But this looks fantastic!

They’re gone. Account flagged as spam.

👕 I beat #Mojole #211 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 💚🖤🖤💛💚 💚💚🖤🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

This is probably a question for Mark, Mike, and Dave more than me but I’ll try my best. I think at the time of Tales, the question of “should Guybrush and Elaine be married” was in the air (as it will probably always be), but there were a few big wrinkles in that that had to be met head on. The first wrinkle was I guess colder, one of canon and IP: no matter what one thought about it, they are married, because that’s what happened in Curse of Monkey Island. That’s a game we were making a sequel to, so it had to be the case. (That said, maybe there was some friction to play with there?) The second wrinkle in the situation, one a little more fun to deal with, comes from the character point of view: If they’re married, if Elaine said yes to the proposal and the marriage, what does that mean? Elaine is a smart and capable and rational person, in fact she’s one of the most perceptive and intuitive characters in the game’s universe, and she sees something in Guybrush that makes her agree to marry him. What does that relationship look like? What does she see in him that makes it work? And on the other hand, how does Guybrush feel about it? How does being married to elaine collide with his sometimes self-sabotaging combination of pride and insecurity? Will he brag about it on one hand while constantly worry that he lucked out and will some day be unmasked as undeserving of this person he loves but isn’t sure he deserves? I think the whole Morgan storyline is maybe a touch melodramatic and soap opera-y in how it was deployed, but it existed in part to test all of Guybrush’s fears on this axis and put him through the wringer over it. I think Return handled a lot of these themes in a more grown up and less melodramatic way than Tales, but that is also kind of thematically appropriate given it’s a story of younger people who are less sure of themselves and what they want in life. (Thanks Return for making some of Tales’ thrashing around seem deliberate!) Again just my take, but I don’t think it was ever considered that Guybrush and Elaine wouldn’t end up together at the end of Tales; the game was meant to make them feel the seams stretching on the bond of their relationship so it’d be tighter and more appreciated for what it is by the end. I think this read is correct. Thank you for clarifying. As an example of this disconnect, the original Curse design document called it “an apology for the end of Monkey 2” in a kidding-not-kidding kind of way. If you’re a fan for whom Monkey 2’s ending needs no apology (or for whom the tone and ideas that game’s ending were grappling with were one of the big draws to the series for you) a sequel whose initial seed of thought was a need to “apologize” for it, is probably not going to resonate with you as much as it does for other fans who don’t share that same specific interest in the series.

Anyway back on topic, my favorite Monkey Island games, in order: * On any given week Monkey Island 1 and 2 bounce between being my favorite. Secret is just so clean, the bar it set is so high, it came out of the gate as such a singular experience that it was able to define a template that five other games could follow and be judged on whether they “feel right” based on those amazing first choices. Its mood, across the whole game but especially on Melee and beneath Monkey islands, is still some of the most potent and pervasive in the series, and Guybrush as he’s written in Secret still may be the perfect balance of naïveté and snark, earnest and detached, as a passthrough for players desires, and somehow as his own person. … … Monkey Island 2 is still, to me, one of the most beautiful looking and sounding games out there. Monkey 2 is just the distillation of “evocative” and “intriguing” to me. When I first played it, walking around Woodtick, I wanted to fall into the screen and live there. The game seems built with every pixel to ooze mystery, to invite you to wonder what’s behind every corner you can’t see, what’s hidden in the cracks of its world. I love that the story is about peeling back layer after layer of a huge pirate mystery that seems way bigger than you. * Return has quickly flown up the list to third place for me. I’m not as purely in love with Return as I am with Monkey Island 1 and 2, but it’s given me more to think about than any other Monkey Island game (and more than most games I’ve played). It’s not a game whose world I want to tumble into the way I did with 2, but I felt an almost manic need to drive through the game and learn what it was about, and when I reached the ending for the first time I realized that I’d been on the same sweaty journey as Guybrush. It felt awesome. Return is less about disappearing into the cracks of its fictional world like 1 and 2 are, but it’s replaced that with a game that is full of nooks and crannies to explore, all of which reinforce and ruminate on the central themes, whether it’s the contents of the scrapbook that bookends the game, the different endings, the frame stories within frame stories, or, of course, the world and puzzles and plot of the game too. I don’t think I’ll ever have the same pure love for Return that I have for 1 and 2 no matter how much time passes, because it always wants to keep me a little more at arms length than the rest of the series. But, it’s the first game since 2 to both keep me on the edge of my seat the whole time, wondering what’s going to happen next, what kind of a story I’m even playing, and also to give me questions to chew on for weeks and months after finishing it, and for those reasons it’ll probably always stay this high up. * Curse, for me, has never crackled with the same weird immeasurable energy as 1 and 2 - it just doesn't seem interested in the idea that there is some unspeakable creepy underbelly beneath the story like those games did - and that’s something I struggled with for a long time because that feeling was what defined Monkey Island to me, but I think with time I’ve gotten over my own hangups and really appreciate Curse on its own terms. As a comedy pirate story filled with swells of adventure, intrigue, melancholy, it delivers; in my opinion it’s one of the best adventure games ever made. It’s just really damn crisp, a game that feels like it matches the intention of its team in the execution of it. It’s obviously beautiful, made by a team at the top of their game who clearly was having a good time making it. The music is still unmatched in the series imo, especially on the production front. It has a huge cast of memorable characters you really want to spend more time with. Guybrush and Elaine and LeChuck feel more flattened to me as characters in Curse, another knock against it from me personally, and while I think it sets an unfortunate trend in the series, I can’t fault Curse for it entirely: Curse is aiming to be Monkey Island by way of Disney cartoon, and the way they “flatten” the characters could just as easily be seen as “heightening” them in terms of making them feel like they fit in, or even pop, in their new animated setting. Not quite what I’m after personally, but so it goes. (Also the voice casting rules. Earl Boen as LeChuck will forever be a beautiful and inspired gift Curse gave us.) * Escape is harder for me to square on all fronts. I love that for some people out there this is their favorite Monkey Island game, but it’s not for me. The art, engine, writing, mood all seem kind of at odds with each other, like many different people all had ideas for how a new Monkey Island game might work, and they all got thrown into a room together and started working, but never ended up on the same page. It has gags I love and still remember, some puzzles I think of fondly, themes and plot points that I think are pretty inspired and clever, lots of great animation and music, but at least for me as a player, the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts. Guybrush, LeChuck, and Elaine slip into even more one-note versions of who they are, almost parodies of their characters from the earlier games, which I wish I could find fun and laugh at the way the game itself sometimes does, but it mostly made me sad. And it’s got some real bummer moments that for me will never work (the giant anime robot duel at the end especially). * At times, even though I worked on it, Tales is at the bottom of my own list. When I first heard we might be licensing the series from Lucas to make the fifth game, my first response was “no, we shouldn’t do it,” because I knew the budget we’d be operating at was tiny compared to the original games. When I heard it would be a WiiWare game my heart sank because I knew each chapter had to fit in a 40 mb footprint, which means the whole season would only get 200 megs of storage — less than half of just one of the two CDs that Curse got a decade earlier. And I still feel that crunch whenever I go back and replay: The dialog prompts that result in the same voice line said regardless of what you choose, the repeated and reused pirate models, the soundtrack buried under bad midi. I was worried we’d make a Monkey Island so cheap it would be an embarrassment and I often still feel that way. I can’t speak as definitively of my more positive feelings because they’re about our own creative choices as a team, but we tried to tell a rollicking pirate adventure that went places the previous games never did, we tried to infuse things with an air of mystery that built up over the season, we tried to start the process of pushing Guybrush, LeChuck, and Elaine back to the people we knew from the earlier games, and we tried to at least acknowledge the weird edges and undercurrent of the story even if we didn’t feel like it was our job or place to fully dive into them. I don’t think we fully succeeded at any of those things, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for going as far as saying we didn’t achieve any of them. Sometimes I think of a moment from Tales, or an aspiration we had for it, or a memory from making it, and I’m filled with enough happiness and pride that it shoots way up this list! With time I’ve settled on mostly being proud of Tales - I think what the team achieved with the budgetary, platform, and managerial constraints we were handed is still impressive, and our love for and thoughtfulness around the world of Monkey Island shines through. But I completely get if that isn’t enough. If it doesn’t work for you for the same reasons I have misgivings, or for some completely different combination of reasons, that’s just how it is! I love that with this series basically no two people have the same list with the same reasons. My favorites are the weird total outliers that have, for example, Escape at the top or a total dunk on one of the earlier games down at the bottom just because it’s such a break in the trend, but even within more conventional orderings there are always hopefully some fun details and reasonings.

Lots of posts from people who don’t like the ending, some very nuanced but many going so far as to saying things like the developers are “spitting in the face of fans” with the games ending. The Reddit has plenty of positivity and nuance but it’s buried in the cracks. What seems to be happening there right now is any time someone doesn’t like the ending they go to the subreddit and make a new thread saying “my honest opinion” or “am I the only person who doesn’t like it?” and then the same crew rolls into the comments to repeat the same comments they leave in each of these threads about how they also don’t like it. There’s plenty of “if you’re an old school monkey island fan like me you agree with me” or “I’m speaking for all the real fans when I say this” going on, as a way to light a torch and wave it around their opinion to defend it against all comers. Reddit is where people go to make posts when they want to make sure they aren’t the only one feeling a certain way about something. Odds are good they’ll find others who agree with them, then band together with them, and that can set the tone for a subreddit for a while. But that doesn’t mean Reddit represents the majority opinion on that thing, even among die-hard fans. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it’s just the place people end up going to complain together, or celebrate together, or just puff each others similar opinions up. Sometimes when polarizing moments happen in a fan community, a subreddit can tip overwhelmingly one way or another in a way that feels almost random in which way it tips, especially if it’s not heavily moderated. A lot of the posts on the MI sub are negative, but when there’s a poll the answers skew a lot more positive, which indicates to me that there are plenty of people out there who enjoyed the game and aren’t participating in discussion there, which is very one note at the moment. Personally I don’t mind people sharing their “honest opinion” (other than the part where they feel the need to to call it “honest,” which implies anyone who feels differently from the author of the post is being dishonest or wearing blinders), you feel the way you feel about a creative work. That’s part of the fun! But it drives me up the wall when they try to smother someone else’s opinion, passively or aggressively, by claiming that only one opinion exists that speaks for “the fans” and it happens to be theirs. I think that is the behavior that eventually makes people leave the conversation and just lurk from the sidelines.

God 👕 I beat #Mojole #210 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💛💛💚💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Give me a break dude. It’s because of what I said: you don’t speak for me. I only had a problem with the one word I called out. There’s a lot of “speaking for the fans” going on in the Monkey Island community right now and it’s… never accurate. Just say “I” or cite specifics. It’s a big fan community with a bunch of different opinions. When you say in fact, your opinion is that of some vague majority, it comes across as an attempt to give your own tastes an outsize amount of power in the conversation. Sorry for getting spicy about it but it’s a pattern I have no tolerance left for at this point.