Two characters scheduled a meeting.
The scene pans and stops at Willie, a man giving off a vibe like drinking a bottle to its last drops.
Mr. Boris hurried to the gate only to find a Willie, the drunkard who dozed off asking for one more bottle to which Mr. Boris shuddered a resounding no.
You can talk to Willie before or after passing the small wooden gate.
Either way, Willie dozes off to his wonderland without answering Boris’ question on whether he noticed any passerby. Mr. Boris was probably referring to the one with whom he has the meeting.
He has four objectives before he can meet the (shady) person. He must leave his ID in his hotel room, go to the river down by the Trestle Trail bridge, turn off the light above the Trestle Trail sign as a signal that he arrived, and meet the person at the large entrance to the underground sewers.
Sounds detailed enough!
He does all these, only to become a victim of a crime.
Two agents who got assigned to the murder case came across each other wishing if only they worked alone.
The atmosphere grows interesting as the characters carry themselves off as lone wolves trying to sort this case by revealing nothing about themselves to each other.
It is how one agent revealed only a tiny detail about himself and stated that he answered as a “need-to-know,” a purely diplomatic expression.
Image Credit: Terrible Toybox
Graphics
Take away the wide-screen, and you will get the 80s and 90s style point-and-click adventure feel. It has a Monkey Island feel, too, except without the overwhelming humor that the other brings.
Gameplay
You hover the mouse over an object and use the command ‘Use’ or ‘Open’ to direct the character into action.
At first, you have the option to go through the casual mode or the hard mode. I would prefer you select the hard difficulty as the developer designed the game to play that way.
The casual mode also cuts out half of the puzzles and, thus, the gameplay.
My Impression
Ron Gilbert, the creator of the Monkey Island adventure, and Gary Winnick dedicated a lot of puzzle-solving delight to this game that has decent voice acting and breathes life into the five main characters.
However, this slight-comedy-based adventure game solves a typical problem of this genre: a To-Do list for every playable character. This feature could be time-saving for many people, especially those who have a busy work-life as I do.
The voice acting may not be up to the mark of a great Lucas Arts story; however, the game has many hundreds of puzzles to solve this crime mystery.
Hence, it’s a simple decision for us adventure gamers.
It feels great to see that the traditional point-and-click still thrives to this day! I love this game. And I believe so will you!
Below are two trailers you could check out:
If you would like to see some gameplay, here’s a link to a walkthrough:
References
IGN. (n.d.). Thimbleweed Park Review. Retrieved July 17, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-m-ETqve40