Adventure Gamers - Forums

For those who have finished the game
I tried opening the trashcan behind the diner and now Agent Reyes is dead.
Have I just screwed myself over? I didn’t think this game would have death and I haven’t been saving.

tomimt - 01 April 2017 04:34 PM

If anyone’s interested, here’s my long take of Thimbleweed Park. https://goo.gl/0s2sxn
Short version, it’s a great game.

Even you scrap all bias and nostalgia, its really a solid game on its own , rightly said
I am thinking of playing on Tablets now, is pixel hunting later too small or do you think can be manageable on tablets

Advie - 01 April 2017 09:43 AM

from you have gotten 14 hours guys? aww, still only in my third hour of gameplay

That’s the way Advie, you take your time… People wait 2 years for this and then finish it in 2 days, I don’t get it. Crazy…

OzzieMonkey - 01 April 2017 09:40 PM

For those who have finished the game
I tried opening the trashcan behind the diner and now Agent Reyes is dead.
Have I just screwed myself over? I didn’t think this game would have death and I haven’t been saving.

Just keep playing. You’ll see.

i’m having loads of fun so far. recently i’m more hyped by new developers rather than a game by the old stars but this one proved me wrong. i can’t think of a better executed modern ag that tries to be classic and oldschool. way to go, grumpy.

The only Lucas Art games I ever played were the Monkey Island series which I have a fondness for.
Anyway I’m a few hours into this game, finding it quite a different experience (in a good way!:tup}, loving the story + puzzles but getting very irritated with the ‘a-reno’ & the ‘a-who’ - okay it does in places distinguish between the role in which the 2 same characters are in at the time but otherwise it’s so annoying - what’s that about???? Does it have some nostalgic roots in an earlier game? & on that note I’m finding the game a little too clique ......but I’m enjoying it whatever!     

wilco - 01 April 2017 12:43 PM

tomimt - 01 April 2017 12:25 PM

Walkers article was pretty interesting. Talk about hyperbole.

Probably I’m biased, just found it funny because but my thought was “So many positive reviews, lets see RPS Walker destroying another modern adventure… wait, it’s a positive review by Smith… oh wait, here it is”
(I don’t think an article complaining about the first 3 minutes of what essentialy is the tutorial is that interesting)

The thing is for the first time maybe, I agree with John Walker. When I first started the game and saw the beloved verb interface, I tried pushing the beggar, I tried looking at him, picking him up but I was disappointed that all of those actions just made me talk to the beggar.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m two hours into the game and I love it but I wish there was more interactivity with the multiple verb interface. Not being able to look at people is annoying and I’ve always loved it when there are jokes when trying to do nonsensical actions with the multiple verb interface.

giom - 02 April 2017 07:23 PM

The thing is for the first time maybe, I agree with John Walker. When I first started the game and saw the beloved verb interface, I tried pushing the beggar, I tried looking at him, picking him up but I was disappointed that all of those actions just made me talk to the beggar.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m two hours into the game and I love it but I wish there was more interactivity with the multiple verb interface. Not being able to look at people is annoying and I’ve always loved it when there are jokes when trying to do nonsensical actions with the multiple verb interface.

I wonder if they did it that way on purpose so as not to ‘frustrate’ inexperienced players who might not want to try every verb+click combination. It would have been better if the auto-choosing was optional or was limited to “easy” mode though. I actually tend to get ‘more’ confused when the interface does something other than what I tell it to.

I agree that Walker’s article was perfectly fair (apart from the “look at gate” criticism: not all interactions are going to bring an interesting response, that’s just how it is). The failure to account for players not having looked at the inventory yet is just baffling; didn’t they playtest this section at all? It’s not a huge problem in the game as a whole, though.

What is a problem are a number of “why would the character do this?” puzzles, where you have to coordinate actions between different characters without any communication. There is one place in the game in particular where one character has to type in a code that he has no way of knowing, which the player knows because a different character has seen it (and there’s no way for those characters to communicate at the time). Huge failure of disbelief-suspension right there (which you could charitably argue is deliberate at that point in the game).

I do think the game is good, but I’m not convinced it’s “five stars” good. The backgrounds are gorgeous, but otherwise I don’t see it rising above the general standard of modern indie/retro adventures (unless you count length as a factor). Resonance had better multi-character puzzles and storytelling (and a more powerful expressive UI), Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please had better adventure game/LucasArts in-jokes (and a far better text adventure section), the Blackwell series is better at the ghost stuff (more creative puzzles, more affecting stories), etc.

[spoiler]I also felt the writing around the big twist was a bit lacking. So, for example, was Chuck actually angry at Delores for wanting to be a games programmer rather than take over PillowCorp, or was that all just an act? Whichever explanation you pick, it doesn’t seem entirely satisfactory. And who actually killed the German guy? Chuck himself? But he’s dead/uploaded, isn’t he? The sheriff? Why? And if they wanted to pin it on Willie, why didn’t they just have him arrested? Is the sheriff/coroner/hotel manager a robot? Or three robots? Towards the end there was a cutscene where Reyes is knocked out in the morgue with the coroner and a woman – possibly Ray – standing over his body. What was that about? What did they do to him? Again, why? I’m fine with the story going all Thirteenth Floor, but I really think they should wrap up the initial mystery properly.[/spoiler]

I agree that the comedy and fourth-wall-breaking element makes it a less serious problem, because, essentially, “repeat to yourself: it’s just a game, I should really just relax!”

But at the same time, I think this excuse edges dangerously close to “it’s not supposed to make sense… or be, you know, good”. Regardless of any meta-justification, it compromises the integrity of the puzzle, and that undermines my engagement with the story: I don’t care as much about the characters or the situations they find themselves in.

When, at the end, the characters face the destruction of their world, it doesn’t really matter, because neither the characters nor the world feel real to me.

The thing is, Ron Gilbert agrees with this (or at least he used to):

As an exercise, take one complete path through a story game and then tell it to someone else, as if it were a standard story.  If you find places where the main character could not have known a piece of information that was used (the character who learned it died in a previous game), then there is a hole in the plot.

http://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck

He’s talking specifically about information that characters can only get by dying, but I think it applies equally here. (He also, as I think Walker points out in his article, condemns backwards puzzles.)