--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 060
+title: Thimbleweed Park
+date: April 15, 2017
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: gaming
+---
+
+<p style="text-align: right">*There appears to be a small hole in the
+back of the head, origins unknown...
+The hole in the victim's head doesn't look like a gunshot,
+more like a puncture from a sharp object...
+Which is odd because the opening title sequence clearly showed a gunshot
+with accompanying sound effect...*</p>
+
+Thimbleweed Park is that nostalgic outcry of the old fart '80s computer
+programmer that he once made games and earned some money from it, so
+thirty years later he'd like to give it another shot. That, and an
+attempt to educate today's kids about how cool
+[point-and-click verb-based adventure games][dott] used to be back in
+the day. That, and pretty clearly a hand extended towards Maniac Mansion
+fans, given that it's marketed as its spiritual successor.
+
+<span class="imgleft"><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-01.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-01-thumb.png"
+title="She's a pixelated girl in a pixelated world..."
+/></a></span>
+From an artistic point of view, things look as follows. Ron Gilbert and
+Gary Winnick took the late '80s-early '90s pop culture and tried to cram
+most of it, and a satire thereof, in a video game. It's 1987, you
+see. And a man is killed, you see. And there's not one, but two FBI
+agents (a chick and a guy, whaddaya know!) on the case. And the
+atmosphere throughout the entire setting -- Thimbleweed Park, a shadow
+of a former glory of the pillow-making industry -- is eerie, you
+see. Hard to comprehend if you haven't lived through those times' TV
+shows, but otherwise this is one of the rare cases where the utter lack
+of originality actually adds to the artistry.
+
+<span class="imgright"><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-02.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-02-thumb.png"
+title="View's lookin' pretty nice."
+/></a></span>
+Later on we find out that there are actually four, or about five,
+in-game player characters, all contributing to the story. We're not
+quite sure which one of them is *the* centerpiece of our game, but it
+doesn't matter, because this being a comedy, the story isn't supposed to
+make sense. Even so, the thick of the story is very interesting --
+there's mystery, and there is a ton of humour of all kinds -- but
+unfortunately the conclusion is a fourth wall mess that satirizes
+itself. Or anyway, it seems that the writers didn't want to lead the
+storytelling anywhere than in a hollow. I don't know what to make of
+this.
+
+From the point of view of game design, the game sits in the exact same
+place as [Day of The Tentacle][dott-again]. It's like most of the
+puzzles were made on purpose to keep the player brute-forcing, which in
+my masochism I really enjoyed, not least because the game offers a lot
+of possibilities for exploring and discovering various trivia. I was
+expecting it to be more frustrating for the weekend gamer, but it's
+actually not.
+
+<span class="imgleft"><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-03.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-03-thumb.png"
+title="The gang."
+/></a></span>
+The neo-pixelated '90s graphics style is absolutely gorgeous. The
+in-game disco music is a-musing, while the background music is pretty
+damn good, probably inspired from Twin Peaks. I've absolutely nothing to
+object on the technical side; whatever game engine they used, I hope
+it's used in other games, because the lack of a single bug in a
+post-2010 Linux game is quite the rarity.
+
+<span class="imgright"><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-04.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-04-thumb.png"
+title="The stray ghost."
+/></a></span>
+I am somewhat inclined to compare Thimbleweed Park to
+[Broken Age][broken-age], not from any technical or artistic point of
+view, but rather from the point of view of the promises made to fans. I
+think Gilbert and Winnick have done much a better job than their
+ex-colleague Tim Schafer in getting a game out. They seem to have kept
+it simple, or at least *simpler* to a degree, in developing this game,
+and they haven't set the highest expectation possible for their
+Kickstarter backers, which in my opinion makes this a successful
+gamble. It's not like Thimbleweed shines in any way, not in the absolute
+and not in comparison to other adventure games, but I'd recommend this
+to anyone, while Broken Age... I don't know, I haven't even had the
+patience to bring it to a proper conclusion myself.
+
+So, let it be known that I recommend Thimbleweed Park to anyone, be they
+hardcore gamers or weekend gamers or non-gamers. It's worth a weekend or
+two, and then another weekend or two after a couple of years... and then
+another one. Because, as the agents'-a-reno-a-who-a-boo saying goes:
+
+> \-- I feel like we're getting close to cracking this case.
+> \-- The only thing you're getting close to cracking is my patience with
+> you.
+
+<span><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-05.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-05-thumb.png"
+title="Ransome the uncensoredly fuckin' clown."/></a></span>
+<span><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-06.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-06-thumb.png"
+title="A proper *nix box."/></a></span>
+<span><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-07.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-07-thumb.png"
+title="Back before sexism was a thing."/></a></span>
+<span><a href="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-08.png"> <img
+class="thumb" src="/uploads/2017/04/thimbleweed-08-thumb.png"
+title="Insecure one-time pad."/></a></span>
+
+[dott]: /posts/y03/051-day-of-the-tentacle.html#fn6
+[dott-again]: /posts/y03/051-day-of-the-tentacle.html
+[broken-age]: /posts/y00/024-broken-age.html
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff
