I still remember well playing the Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken point-and-click adventures in the early 90s. I never finished any of them, and that didn’t change later with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or Secret of Monkey Island either. With which I have just listed practically all the successful games by and/or with Ron Gilbert.

Other sentences from old people can also begin with “If someone had told me back then…”.

If someone had told me back then that I would be doing my bit to see another game by Ron Gilbert and company produced, and that I would even be featured in the game, I would have looked more than incredulous and confused. But thanks to the crowdfunding campaign for Thimbleweed Park on Kickstarter, it has come true!

Though I need to take it down a notch here. I have nothing to do with the plot of the game and could “only” buy my way into two in-game accessories. First, the phone book, and with it an answering machine message that you can call in the game. My number there is 7709!

The second accessory is even more mundane and refers to the evil clown’s swear jar. It’s so mundane that I couldn’t even remember it when I was at that point in the game. Maybe I’ll go back to it.

It was also very liberating to be able to clear my conscience, if not my karma. Having illegally acquired all the games mentioned above during my youth, my conscience is now clear… well, a little clearer. This does not cover Indiana Jones and Zak McKracken:

Now that I’ve spent ages describing how brilliantly I’ve supported this game, let’s get to the point: It was worth the effort!

I got what I expected. A classic point-and-click adventure, just like in the good old days. Another thing old people like to say.
The typical jokes and lots of references to the old games mentioned above, and endless hours of searching until you finally get a little bit further. In the old days you had expensive walkthrough books, most of which were copied. Now there is a HintTron 3000 in Thimbleweed Park, which can be reached by dialling 4468 (HINT).

Before we get to the trailer, I would like to strongly recommend that you buy it (karma!). The game is available for almost all platforms, including smartphones, and can be found on Steam among other places: thimbleweedpark.com

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This post is part of my Kickstarter page.