Thimbleweed
Dead bodies, spooky spectral spirits, a verbal word salad of choice… Andy Kelly thinks it’s just another normal day in LinuxFormat Towers.
Andy Kelly is hooked on this retro point and click adventure, and it’s not that he’s filling up on the delicious verb salad interface – he loves the murder mystery storyline!
Federal agents Ray and Reyes are investigating a murder in the remote rural town of Thimbleweed Park. A body was found under a bridge on the edge of town, but none of the locals seem to know anything about it or who the victim is. The agents have a checklist of tasks they have to complete to crack the case, including identifying the body and finding the murder weapon. But fingering out the killer won’t be easy, because this is a MonkeyIsland- style point-and-click adventure game with a classic verb buffet interface: use, give, pick up, push and so on.
One of the first puzzles is taking a photo of the body, which is an introduction to the concept of switching characters and swapping items between them. But this gentle start soon gives way to the complex, elaborate puzzle chains the genre is famous (or perhaps infamous) for.
If you’ve ever wondered if it was possible to solve a homicide with a chainsaw, some sticky tape, and a coin, you’re about to find out. Untangling a single problem can span several hours in ThimbleweedPark, and all of these objects are small pieces on opposite ends of a huge, elaborate jigsaw puzzle.
There are other playable characters: Ransome is a foul-mouthed clown living a lonely life, Delores is a game designer and meek pillow salesman Franklin is a ghost trapped in the hotel where he was killed.
Each character has a lengthy to-do list in their inventory, which gives you direction without being too explicit. There’s no hint system, but speaking to people and inspecting items in your inventory is often enough to steer you towards a solution. The game strikes a delicate balance between giving you subtle clues and steadfastly refusing to help you in any way, which makes solving a particularly tricky puzzle enormously satisfying. You feel like you’ve earned every victory.
The great outdoors
You will get stuck, but the game’s open structure mean you don’t encounter any brick walls. You can explore the town and the surrounding county (including the hotel and circus) freely, eventually unlocking a map that lets you travel between locations almost instantly.
With five playable characters, four of whom have inventories stuffed with items, including many that don’t actually do anything, the game can occasionally be overwhelming. Sometimes we felt like we were fumbling around in the dark, hopelessly combining random items and trying every possible verb on every object we could find. But we always managed to claw our way out of those puzzle holes eventually, and the satisfaction of doing so ultimately made all the headscratching and swearing worth it.
ThimbleweedPark avoids the ‘adventure game logic’ pitfall, possibly as the LucasArts ‘90s money-making hint line has long closed. It never feels like it’s being deliberately obscure just to make your life needlessly difficult.
Humour is often the glue that holds everything together in adventure games, and while ThimbleweedPark is funny, it does lack some of the warmth and charm of MonkeyIsland. It’s overly self-referential and relies a little too much on sarcasm over actual jokes. But a cast of weird, colourful characters, entertaining dialogue, and a compelling central mystery keeps you interested.
ThimbleweedPark captures the essence of classics adventures while avoiding some of the things that made them frustrating. More genuine character interaction would have been good and sometimes the story gets a little too meta, but this is one of the best modern point-and-click adventures around.