GHOST TOWN
Something strange is going on in the town of Thimbleweed Park.
Federal agents Ray and Reyes are investigating a murder in the remote rural town of Thimbleweed Park. A body was found under a railway bridge on the edge of town, but none of the locals seem to know anything about it, or even who the victim is. The agents have a checklist of tasks to complete, including identifying the body and finding the murder weapon. But finding the killer won’t be easy, because this is a point-and-click adventure game. One of the first puzzles is taking a photo of the body, which covertly serves as an introduction to the concept of switching characters and swapping items between them. Ray has a Polaroid camera, because it’s the 1980s, and Reyes has the film. You get the idea. But this gentle start soon gives way to the elaborate puzzle chains the genre is famous (or perhaps infamous) for.
Untangling a single problem can span several hours, and the objects you need are often small pieces on opposite ends of a huge, elaborate jigsaw.
There are other playable characters. Ransome is a misanthropic, foul-mouthed clown living a lonely life in an abandoned circus after being cursed never to remove his makeup. Delores is an adventure game designer who returns home to Thimbleweed Park following the death of her uncle. And meek pillow salesman Franklin, Delores’ father, is a ghost trapped in the hotel where he was killed.
The game uses a Monkey Island- style verb buffet: use, give, pick up, push, etc. But, brilliantly, Franklin has his own set of ghostly verbs, including moan, wail, and despair. He can’t touch anything, because he’s dead, but he can chill the air, blow on things, and zap electronics. This forms the basis of some really clever puzzles, and makes a nice change of pace from the more traditional pointing and clicking. Each character has a to-do list in their inventory, which gives you directions without being explicit. There’s no hint system, but the game strikes a fine balance between giving you clues and refusing to help you in any way, which makes solving a particularly tricky puzzle enormously satisfying.
You will get stuck, of course. But the game’s open structure meant I encountered few genuine brick walls in the 16 hours it took me to finish. You can explore Thimbleweed Park and the surrounding county freely, eventually unlocking a map that lets you travel between locations almost instantly. This means if one puzzle has you confused, you can attempt another one somewhere else.
But with five playable characters, four of whom have inventories stuffed with items, many of which don’t actually do anything, the game can be overwhelming. Sometimes I was fumbling around in the dark, hopelessly combining items and trying every possible verb on every object I could find. But I always managed to claw my way out of these holes, and the satisfaction of doing so ultimately made all the headscratching and swearing worth it.
THOUGHT PROCESS
‘Adventure game logic’ has become something of a derogatory term, but I was glad to discover Thimbleweed Park’s puzzle solutions rarely require the absurd leaps of logic that would have you dialling the LucasArts hint line in the ’90s. There are a couple of eyebrow-raisers, but it wouldn’t be an adventure game without them. It never feels like it’s being deliberately obscure just to make your life needlessly difficult.
Humor is the glue that holds everything together in point-andclick adventures, but while this was funny, I found it lacked some of the warmth and charm of games like Monkey Island. It’s overly selfreferential at times, clumsily bulldozing the fourth wall, and relies a little too much on sarcasm over actual jokes. But the weird, colorful characters, witty dialogue, and central mystery kept me interested.
Thimbleweed Park dips into the past, but doesn’t use it as a crutch, managing to capture the essence of classic adventures while avoiding some of the things that made them frustrating. I would have liked to see more of a connection between the characters, who never really interact other than to silently swap items. And sometimes it gets a little too meta for its own good. But otherwise this is one of the best modern point-and-click adventures on PC.
Franklin is a ghost trapped in the hotel where he was murdered