Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Thimbleweed Park: The Obsession.

When the game Myst came out in the 1990s, it was billed as "The Surrealistic Adventure That Will Become Your World." I'm not sure I'd say the same about Thimbleweed Park, but only because it is a lot more funny than it is haunting. It sure had me going to my phone at random intervals to try crazy things to advance the plot.

Obsession? Such a cruel word. 

Myst's various worlds were beautiful landscapes you wanted to explore; Thimbleweed Park is kind of a dump you would want to flee, rendered in pixely 1987 LucasArts type screens (no coincidence that the game is set in 1987). 

This is one of those classic adventure puzzlers, where you have to solve a bunch of puzzles and do a bunch of weird things to get through the story. Although the game opens with a murder, it is really the spiritual brother of LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island rather than a mystery like The Last Express. First, because the action menu is typical; your character can Talk To, Push, Pull, Use, etc. the things and people he or she encounters; second, because Ron Gilbert is one of the designers and he invented Monkey Island; and third, because like Monkey Island, this game is completely insane. I loved it. 

(Very mild spoilers may follow....)


Put together through Kickstarter, the game is a strange journey through a the small town of Thimbleweed Park, initially to solve a murder, later to confront a much greater evil. And you do it with the help of... an agent who may be bad, another agent who may not be an agent, a dead guy, a nerd, and a clown. So, you're screwed right off the bat.  


If you play the game through you can use an easy or a difficult setting. If you intend to use the more difficult setting, you will need a tremendous amount of patience, and maybe a tips/walkthrough page, or maybe both. I ultimately wound up using a lot of patience and a few online hints. You can make yourself absolutely crazy trying to get a dime when all you have a nickel, or trying to find a way to get information out of someone when one of your action options is not "BEAT UP".

The game is virtually made up of what would be mini-quests in other games, and they often don't make sense except in the game's own deranged logic. If you are the kind of person who gets furious because your character has to get a particular magazine from a newsstand that's only open after dawn and will only sell that if you can prove your age but you have no ID so you have to get another guy to make you a fake ID and he will only do it for a salami sandwich but the diner has no salami and you have to get them some and -- and so on, then this game may feel like a frustrating waste of time. (Example above is not real, but could have been.) If you like these kinds of challenge, it's right up your alley.

That said, you'll probably waste time anyway, because the game is packed with things to look at. Including at least one alley. There is an entire giant library full of books with short excerpts; there are phone books with everyone who made a Kickstarter contribution; there are even video games within the game, if you can find tokens. (Note: You probably will not be able to find the tokens.)

Since you have to work several different characters, you may find that you need to coordinate their actions in a way that will not make internal sense. For example, for a character to solve a puzzle in one part of town, you may have to switch to another character in another area who can do a required action to enable the resolution but would have no reason at all to do so. Go ahead and do it, and hang the motivation.

If that advice doesn't make sense, don't worry, it will.

As you proceed the air of menace grows, only exacerbated by the background humor. It's darkly funny, but you do come to care about the characters, at least most of them. Yes, even the clown. Maybe even especially the clown. And even if, as in Monkey Island, your characters' safety is seldom a concern, there's no guarantee you'll get a happy ending.

Ultimately it's an extremely meta game, and I did find it engrossing and enjoyable and often hilarious. So I'm happy to help out, as the creators request during the closing credits:


We wouldn't want them to have to get real jobs. We want them to make Thimbleweed Park 2. Hey, if Monkey Island could run five games, they can squeeze out another Thimbleweed Park, I'm sure.

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