Thimbleweed Park

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

.

Review:

Thimbleweed Park is a Graphic Adventure released in 2017 on PC, mobile devices, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game comes from Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, best known for their earlier collaboration on games in the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion franchises. As such, fans of those franchises will find themselves right at home with this game’s quirky style and its gameplay.

Where Monkey Island skewered pirate and buccaneer films, and Maniac Mansion had an Addams Family-esque take on the sci-fi/horror genre, Thimbleweed Park follows a pair of federal agents investigating a murder in an unusual small town where half of the town’s shops are closed, and half of its residents seem to be mentally unstable. Players must talk with the townsfolk and gather clues, with the ultimate goal of positively identifying enough pieces of evidence to solve the murder.

One of the better parts of this game is its unique cast of characters, and the unusual vibe of the town itself. The entire town and its people are all bizarre and “off”, but not in a way that comes across as outright funny or, on the opposite end, disturbing. Rather, the game’s titular location is just slightly bizarre, and a part of the challenge for the two agents is to find ways to either work with or around the odd eccentricities of the town and its denizens while they conduct their investigation.

Speaking of the two agents, players can have these characters split apart to cover more ground, and swap between them at (almost) any time, a system that may be familiar to players of Maniac Mansion, allowing players to easily perform tasks in different places in succession. And much like that and other old-school Graphic Adventure games, you’ll be picking up a lot of random junk, and looking for the right command to use on the right person or thing… and doing a lot of moving a cursor around looking for stuff to click on.

While Thimbleweed Park tries to make this a more user-friendly version of those classic experiences of the past, it doesn’t do a very good job of that ‘user-friendly” part – there’s a “quick tab” button that’s supposed to move through all interactive objects in turn, but it often doesn’t seem to work properly, and players will find themselves going back and forth between the commands and the main screen, something that can get kinda’ tedious. At the very least, players are given a checklist of things they need to do in case they ever find themselves getting lost, and there’s even an in-game hint line you can call (this game does occasionally breath the fourth wall).

It bears mention that this game makes excellent use of the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, which is easily the best way to play this game. Playing the game with traditional gamepad controls feels awkward and cumbersome.

As for the presentation, Thimbleweed Park uses pixel art visuals that are somewhat reminiscent of the “big head” style of graphics the Maniac Mansion games had, but with more environmental detail and animations throughout. Overall it looks good, but the “big head” style doesn’t quite mesh well with the otherwise quite nice visuals. These visuals are backed by an atmospheric soundtrack and full voice acting for the game’s characters, most of it pretty good.

Ultimately, Thimbleweed Park is a Graphic Adventure for classic fans of the genre, players who hold Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island as greats of the genre still to this day. If that sounds like you, you will absolutely want to get your hands on Thimbleweed Park. However, if you were hoping that this game might do more to modernize and streamline that classic formula, you might be disappointed with just how old-fashioned it can be.

tl;dr – Thimbleweed Park is a Graphic Adventure from the makers of the Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island games, with this game focusing on two federal agents investigating a murder in a very strange town. Fans of those classic Ron Gilbert franchises I just mentioned will find that this game is perfect for them, but players hoping for a more streamlined modern experience may find this game lacking in that regard. Still, overall this is an excellent entry in the genre, even if it can be a bit tedious at times.

Grade: B

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are MB, Andy Miller, Johannes, u/RamboFox, Exlene, Eli Goodman, Ilya Zverev, and Stov. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}