You can now play old-school arcade games within old-school adventure game Thimbelweed Park [official site]. Cool-a-reno. The town’s arcade was previously just a facade, but now you can snoop inside and pop a token into such 8-bit delights as Meteor Menace, Space Slime and Die! Enemy Scumm!

But, like the rest of Thimbleweed Park, it’s not quite as straightforward as you might hope. You’ll have to solve puzzles to get access to those tokens, creator Ron Gilbert said on Twitter. The arcade is only available in the game’s hard mode as well, so expect those puzzles to bend your mind.

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I’m constantly getting stuck in Thimbleweed Park [official site], the old-school adventure game from the creators of Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. I always seem to have an inventory full of loose popcorn, soot, a t-shirt and some dynamite with no clue as to how to combine them in order to get ice cream cake to a hungry ghost.

I thought I was just being dense, but it turns out that I’m not the only one who’s had issues. Fans and critics have remarked that the game needed a hint system and the team has, somewhat reluctantly, obliged. And not just any old hint system: a proper hint hotline you can call from the in-game phones, reminiscent of the real gaming hint lines of the ’80s.

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Thimbleweed Park [official site], the new adventure game from Maniac Mansion creators Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, finally has a release date. On March 30th, two-and-a-quarter years after the game’s crowdfunding campaign ended, we’ll be welcomed into the small town of Thimbleweed Park to investigate murder and other strange goings-on. It’ll bring puzzles, chat, jokes, japes – y’know, stuff you’d broadly expect from the reunion of a pair of LucasArts adventure veterans. Read the rest of this entry »

Thimbleweed Park [official site] – that’s the point and click adventure game being spearheaded by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick of Maniac Mansion fame – has a new trailer. I’ve been curious about the game for a while and we’ve had some really interesting bits on the site about it, like Adam’s interview with Gilbert at GDC. But this is the first time a trailer for it has stoked something other than that slightly distant professional interest: Read the rest of this entry »

Thimbleweed Park [official site] – a sinister and quirky point and click from Maniac Mansion’s Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick – has a trailer out to coincide with Gamescom. Adam went to see a demo of the game back in March and that focused around the playable character of celebrity clown, Ransome. This trailer takes a look at aspiring game developer and heiress Delores Edmund – another playable character – and gives a bit of background on the game’s namesake:

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Thimbleweed Park [official site] is the upcoming point-and-click adventure from Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick that’s billed as a “true spiritual successor” to the duo’s 1987 classic Maniac Mansion. It’s designed to emulate the LucasArts games of Way Back When, complete with black comedy and an instantly recognisable SCUMM-style interface, and now has a new trailer. Introducing Agent Ray:

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Broken Age was trapped between two posts: its need to satisfy the nostalgia of the people who funded it via Kickstarter, and its desire to be accessible and reach a modern audience. The former group seemed displeased with the results, which is maybe what’s pushed Thimbleweed Park beyond its own $375,000 Kickstarter goal in just a week. It’s from the creators of Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, and they’re creating a point and click adventure that feels like “opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.”

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We’d rather hoped to have brought you a review of Double Fine’s The Cave by now, but unfortunately Sega only made 360 code available before release. And then to make matters dumb, despite its release date being today, and its being out today on 360, the Steam version has seemingly been set for the incorrect date, and is locked until tomorrow morning. Having already completed it twice on the consolebox, I’m in the frustrating position of wanting to tell you wot I think, but completely unable to advise you as to the state of the PC build. So while I hope this might get someone’s attention and have the Steam build unlocked for everyone, below I’ll give you a couple of lines of impressions and tell you to cross your legs.

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Mr Ron Gilbert, inventor of clicking, has released a bunch more screenshots of his forthcoming adventure, The Cave. The existence of The Cave does seem something of an anomaly – Doublefine ran their famous Kickstarter campaign on the basis that publishers won’t fund the development of adventure games. And almost simultaneously announced they’re developing a new adventure game published by Sega. Huh. IS the sort of disguise as a platformer really that effective? You can take a look at how it’s shaping up below.

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