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Thimbleweed Park—Maniac Mansion style game from Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick
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).
Yes! If you get to the end it all makes more sense!
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? [/spoiler]
I dfon’t know what that was about either but was it maybe a flashback to what happened when Reyes disappeared for a while at the beginning of the game? - but I agree it still doesn’t make sense.
I just finished it, clocked about 14 hours.
It took me over 19 - I obviously need more practise!
Oh and the ending was a bit disappointing. It does explain all the 4th wall breaking, but overall it was just a bit of an anticlimax.
Yes, I was very disappointed with the ending too but you did play until the end of the credits yes? .... not that it helps to not feel completely ******* by a game that relies on the player’s 4th wall interaction to get through it!
It’s a clever idea that I liked the concept of but ended up not overly impressing me (I would have preferred a straightforward murder mystery) but I did find apart from those misgivings a very engaging & good game! 
I’m guessing that it’s Franklin’s body in the river? Is it ever clarified?
There’s a hint of Easter Eggs in the game (but are there?) as one of the frustrating things I came across is that I had a coupon to use in the Movie machine to claim a movie but it looked like I had to cut the coupon out & I couldn’t find a way of doing it – did anyone else manage it???
BTW - I forgot to mention one nonsensical puzzle that relies not on a scene in the game but one in the Kickstarter promotion video
The body in the river is Boris, a German investor who came to town in order to make a toy deal with Franklin..
The body in the river is Boris, a German investor who came to town in order to make a toy deal with Franklin..
Thank you. How do you know it’s Boris? - yes, I’ve surely missed something here! So why does Delores need to use the balloon animal on Boris’s body - what else did I miss?? 
His name reads on his passport you find from his hotel room as well as on the arrest warrant.
The body of Franklin is never found.
His name reads on his passport you find from his hotel room as well as on the arrest warrant.
Thank you again - after so many hours I’d forgotten about that! Ah! But why did Delores use a balloon toy on him?
Another question; Was Sandy in the diner Ransome’s ex-wife? Otherwise why would he have chosen her to give the card to - I was expecting to be able for him to give something to the witch so that he could take his make-up off….. that never got resolved
I’m guessing the balloon thing might be just a gag about things devs hide in the games at times. Do some random thing and something unexpected happens. It makes no sense on any other way, expect that we know that she has to do a certain thing in order to get to the wireframe world.
If my memory doesn’t fail me, Ransoms notes say to ask forgiveness from someone, as in anyone at all. Sandy was the only one left in Thimbleweed Park who was willing to accept it, despite she didn’t like him. Also it’s her interrogation narrative that triggers the first flashback about him, so that might be the official logic tie up there.
I actually liked the ending because I thought it was quite original.but then again, I tend to like movies that are 4th wall breaking like Stranger than Fiction. That puzzle with the Kickstarter video could become difficult in 20-30 years when people play it as a classic game using an emulator.
I’m also confused by that morgue scene
Another question; Was Sandy in the diner Ransome’s ex-wife? Otherwise why would he have chosen her to give the card to - I was expecting to be able for him to give something to the witch so that he could take his make-up off….. that never got resolved
Sandy is the one that triggers Ransome’s flashback. At this point they (or just he) are all aware they are in a videogame, she even has to remember and repeat the same lines to send Ransome back.
About the coupon and the moviejust use it like that on the machine, you don’t need to cut it out. You have to repair the machine first though.But i wonder, is there a point to this? Someone used it on anything? I though it would be related to the videocamera or Leonard, but got nothing.
I had to go with the four-star rating. While I enjoyed a lot of things - the premise, the huge area, the 1980s B-movie feel, that Gilbert kind of humour that doesn’t rely on parody, often great puzzles, the wonderfully funny and imaginative clown/ghost parts - I found the last several chapters and especially the conclusion to be huge letdowns that almost killed the whole enjoyment from the game. And this is coming from someone who loved the Monkey Island 2 ending. There were a number of other frustrating things, such as forgettable characters, overlong (for this sort of nostalgia romp at least) and often unfunny dialogue, occasional story barriers (I spent good couple of hours trying to solve puzzles I wasn’t supposed to solve in this very chapter) and too many red herrings, even though I figured many of them serve as Easter eggs. There must be a way to steal the shovel from that idiot in the mansion to dig out the treasure under the X mark in the forest, I’m sure. While I realise some of those were done on purpose to mimic the Maniac Mansion feel, I guess I’m used to better games from the same author)
PC means personal computer
About the coupon and the moviejust use it like that on the machine, you don’t need to cut it out. You have to repair the machine first though.But i wonder, is there a point to this? Someone used it on anything? I though it would be related to the videocamera or Leonard, but got nothing.
I’ve since looked at the Kickstarter promotional footage, hinted at in the game, which does give a clue on how to use the balloon animal & I’m guessing that’s the puzzle glom refers to here:
That puzzle with the Kickstarter video could become difficult in 20-30 years when people play it as a classic game using an emulator. [/spoiler]
For me that puzzle doesn’t really work unless the hint is within the game & the ideal would be that it’s on the Betamax tape if you can find a way of playing it?
I had to go with the four-star rating…... I found the last several chapters and especially the conclusion to be huge letdowns that almost killed the whole enjoyment from the game.
......... and too many red herrings, even though I figured many of them serve as Easter eggs. There must be a way to steal the shovel from that idiot in the mansion to dig out the treasure under the X mark in the forest, I’m sure.
Sorry to edit your post so much Doom! but just picked out your main points that I agreed with especially the Easter egg idea as it would elevate the game for me being as there is at least one unresolved issue & too many inventory items left over & I hate the over-use of red herrings! 
Hey, all—Thimbleweed Park ViewTron 3000 now available! Previously only for the press and in limited quantities. Promise I’m not working for Fangamer—I’m just excited to share with my fellow Adventure Gamers and lovers of Thimbleweed Park (and ordered one of my own)!
https://www.fangamer.com/products/thimbleweed-park-view-tron-3000
I finished the game last night. Finally. Took me 19+ hours and I also peeked at a walkthrough a couple of times. 
What I liked about it: Atmosphere. Graphics, even though I’m not a fan of the retro look. Humor. (Well… most of it anyway.) Puzzles involving more than one character. Ghosts. Voiceacting okay, but not great.
What I disliked about it: Endless backtracking. Game is too long, in Part Seven I started losing interest. Very silly ending to “account for” loose ends and lack of a real plot. Some truly awful jokes. A booooo! Some weird non-puzzles, like picking the berries. What was that all about, gamefilling or a joke that went over my head?
It was fun, but certainly not great. Maybe it’s just me getting tired of a certain type of adventure game.
See you around, wolf. Nerissa
Haven’t finished it yet (I think we’re less than an hour away) but I think one thing that should be addressed is that this was never really intended to be a comedy game. I mean, of course, coming from the LA greats a measure of it is to be expected, but I only expected laughs from it as much as I did from e.g. Twin Peaks.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Ron was the puzzle guy and Tim was the humor guy. I really wish they’d make another adventure together… Maybe one day
I was really looking forward to this game and backed it and followed the blog the entire way through.
I thought the game was well designed, but not that enjoyable, I’d give it maybe 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
—I think the puzzles are excellently designed. I got stuck for a while a couple of times, but as long as I thought about what the goal was and went back around and paid more attention to what the characters were saying, I worked it out.
—The art and music are great, except maybe the map which seemed like a step down from the excellent Monkey Island maps.
—The game suffered from having one joke writer for such a long game. There were a ton of jokes (they even say on the sales sites “A joke every 2 minutes… guaranteed!”), but they were hit or miss and mostly limited to either breaking the 4th wall or Ransome swearing. Monkey Island had the benefit of having Ron, Tim, and Dave all working on jokes adding different styles of humor and it meant less pressure on one person to be consistently funny. Ron can be very funny, but not 100% over 20 hours and limited to two styles of humor.
—The setting was pretty boring to me and mostly too “regular” instead of mysterious or interesting. Lots of areas you just walked straight through without interacting with anything.
—The story was a big muddle. It starts like a detective game, but you are made very aware that no one really cares about the murder, but you still have to take time solving it while waiting for the larger mystery to appear. Eventually the twist happens and then the game ends. It felt like a 5 minute story/twist idea with a 20-hour killing-time game attached to the front of it. Also the ending by its very nature makes it even more apparent that stuff you did earlier in the game was kinda pointless.
—With characters, Delores is the likable “everyman” character and should have been the only playable character, IMO. Maybe Franklin briefly, just because of the interesting altered verbs. Ransome would make a great NPC like Stan in Monkey Island, who just pops up with that kind of humor every so often, but it didn’t feel necessary to play as him. The agents were both boring, Reyes in particular. There were maybe a couple of interesting NPCs, the sheriff/coroner/manager, but 99% were dull townsfolk who had nothing particularly interesting or funny to say.
Overall it feels like they made a game that could have been 5-6 hours into one that’s around 20 hours. And the story and humor/writing were stretched really thin to cover that amount of time.
I hope it does well though, so they get another crack at this, because it did a lot of stuff right, like the art and music and puzzles. I think it just lacked big in a couple of the areas that make a game like this enjoyable—interesting settings to explore and interesting characters and humor.
I came here to post some thoughts, but I think LenP has covered most of what I wanted to say.
I would only add that while it’s not a great game, they absolutely delivered on their Kickstarter promise. From what I gather (without having followed the campaign in depth), they set out to give adventure game fanatics a trip down memory lane, and that’s exactly what we got. That warm and fuzzy feeling I got playing it was worth the price of admission alone.
Yes, I was very disappointed with the ending too but you did play until the end of the credits yes?
Oops! ... I left the room while the credits were running. I could hear a typewriter or something at the end but by the time I came back it had gone gack to the menu. I’ve already uninstalled so can’t go back! What happened at the end?
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