The GWJ Adventure Game Club - Game 5: Thimbleweed Park

But I was a teen in the 90s.. just not the target population...

Eleima wrote:

But I was a teen in the 90s.. just not the target population...

Yeah, I guess it would have to do, as well, with whether one enjoyed that sort of game back then. If you weren't into it then, it's highly unlikely you'd get any enjoyment out of it today.

You misunderstand. I did enjoy them. Back in the day. I played LucasArts games (the Indiana Jones Games, DoTT) and Sierra games alike. Adventure games was pretty much all we played.
I just don’t enjoy that kind of slapstick humor anymore.

I actually used my first hint last night. Now I'm on act 3

Spoiler:

For whatever reason I couldn't seem to pick up on the visible clue in the Quik mart. Probably because Leonard is always blocking part of the sign for me. Needed a nickle, he redeems bottles.

I am still really enjoying my time with it.

I think I'm ready to admit defeat here. I started using hints more and more often because I couldn't figure out anything else anymore, and that's when my enjoyment started to wane, something that tends to happen to me when I resort to looking answers up. So I might just not continue...

Remember! There is absolutely no shame in looking things up. I did find that this game is pretty obtuse, and looked up a lot, and I do mean a lot, as I was playing.

It’s been two years since Thimbleweed Park launched!
Feels like it’s been longer, time sure flies.

I did appreciate that the help line attempted to point you in the right direction before outright telling you the answer. Or the lack of a question related to what you wanted to do would indicate that it's not relevant right now.

Spoiler:

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the ghost man to send him on before realizing that it wasn't supposed to be accomplished yet.

Eleima wrote:

Remember! There is absolutely no shame in looking things up. I did find that this game is pretty obtuse, and looked up a lot, and I do mean a lot, as I was playing.

It’s been two years since Thimbleweed Park launched!
Feels like it’s been longer, time sure flies.

Thank you, Eleima! You are right, and even though I have mostly gotten over feeling guilty about looking things up (mostly), I have noticed that, as soon as I start doing it, I start losing interest in the game, which I know is weird, but I can't help it. Even if I don't finish the game, I enjoyed most of what I played, and hey --it was free on the Epic store, so no money wasted!

I started this over the weekend... I didn't get very far (still haven't reached the sheriff's station yet) but I'm curious, what is the difference in the difficulty levels? The description didn't really make it clear to me beyond suggesting that I might be more likely to get stuck in the hard mode. Are the puzzles actually different? Are there puzzles that just don't exist in casual mode?

What I had in mind was something along the lines of what I believe the Telltale Sam & Max games did, where I think there was some way to set the level of hint-iness in characters dialogue, affecting whether the NPC dialogue would hint at what you needed to do or state much more explicitly "I think you should GO HERE and GET THIS", something like that. Was that a thing? I'm pretty sure it was.

Anyway, I want there to be some amount of challenge, but I don't want to be saddled with busywork. What do you all recommend?

mrlogical wrote:

I started this over the weekend... I didn't get very far (still haven't reached the sheriff's station yet) but I'm curious, what is the difference in the difficulty levels? The description didn't really make it clear to me beyond suggesting that I might be more likely to get stuck in the hard mode. Are the puzzles actually different? Are there puzzles that just don't exist in casual mode?

What I had in mind was something along the lines of what I believe the Telltale Sam & Max games did, where I think there was some way to set the level of hint-iness in characters dialogue, affecting whether the NPC dialogue would hint at what you needed to do or state much more explicitly "I think you should GO HERE and GET THIS", something like that. Was that a thing? I'm pretty sure it was.

Anyway, I want there to be some amount of challenge, but I don't want to be saddled with busywork. What do you all recommend?

I don't know anything about the easy mode, but I am currently 8 hours into the hard mode, and I can tell you that while some of the puzzles are fairly convoluted, I am at least having an enjoyable time. There is some level of frustration with getting stuck, but if you get to a point that you are tearing your hair out, there is an online hint system (something that would have made many Sierra and LucasArts adventures much more fun back in the day). It's a well put together hint system too, it doesn't tell you outright what to do right away, but starts off nudging you in the right direction, much like UHS if you've ever used that.

The adventure is such a well put together, though perhaps overly nostalgic experience, that I am taking my time with it and soaking it in.

Based on something Steinkrug said, I believe the difference is that some puzzles require fewer steps to complete on Easy (which is what's I've been playing on). For instance, and without spoiling anything, a puzzle might require five elements in Hard mode, but only three in Easy, so you suffer less.

To answer the question about the difficulty levels: Casual effectively removes entire puzzles and a couple of areas (perhaps more), as well as eliminating many steps for some of the puzzles that remain.

Hm. I'm not sure how to take that. I have no concern about removing steps from some puzzles--it's easy to imagine that if a step in a puzzle is removable it's kinda busywork--but removing entire puzzles and areas gives me a little more heartburn. But eh, who am I kidding, I'll have a better chance of finishing this playing the short version so, oh well. I'll be curious to look into what the differences were when I'm done, this seems like a strange way to divide up the game.

Got to chapter 6 last night. Should be finished after another session.

Thank god for the in game checklists. Back in the day I would have wandered aimlessly for weeks trying to figure out what to do next.

Just finished the game in Hard Mode!

I personally enjoyed all of the fourth-wall breaking stuff.

Spoiler:

Especially toward the end.

However, definitely looking forward to something a little "lighter" puzzle wise now.

Spoiler:

There was no resolution to Franklin's plot thread for me, I ended the game with him still in the hotel.
Was that done on purpose or did I miss something on an optional plot point?

dpmedeiros wrote:

Just finished the game in Hard Mode!

I personally enjoyed all of the fourth-wall breaking stuff.

Spoiler:

Especially toward the end.

However, definitely looking forward to something a little "lighter" puzzle wise now.

Spoiler:

There was no resolution to Franklin's plot thread for me, I ended the game with him still in the hotel.
Was that done on purpose or did I miss something on an optional plot point?

Glad that you enjoyed it! I loved it, hard and obtuse though some of the puzzles seemed. Franklin was the ghost, right?

Spoiler:

You could have Franklin confront Xavier (the head ghost) and get a crystal from him, then have Dolores meet him in the secret room of the hotel so that they could speak one last time.

Spoiler:

You could have Franklin confront Xavier (the head ghost) and get a crystal from him, then have Dolores meet him in the secret room of the hotel so that they could speak one last time.

Spoiler:

Er...how? Franklin kept refusing to stand up to him.

dpmedeiros wrote:
Spoiler:

You could have Franklin confront Xavier (the head ghost) and get a crystal from him, then have Dolores meet him in the secret room of the hotel so that they could speak one last time.

Spoiler:

Er...how? Franklin kept refusing to stand up to him.

Prior to that, you have to do certain things with Franklin, like...

Spoiler:

I think they are plot-essential, though. Getting the magic book from the occult shop, iirc. The trick then is to confront Xavier during the final chapter, as Franklin would then have the guts to do so.

I forget the exact steps I followed in previous chapters, though. You may want to look up a walkthrough.

I belatedly finished this over the weekend, on Easy mode, via Game Pass on Xbox. It was okay.

A funny thing about Easy Mode is it sometimes made things a bit more confusing. For the puzzles you get to skip, it seems it doesn't eliminate all the objects, so you'll carry around things in your inventory that you think may be useful that just never are. Or spot usable items in rooms that you don't ever do anything with. It seems to slightly inflate the number of solutions you can imagine to the puzzles you do have, in a way. Also, sometimes I was excited to spot the start of a puzzle that I realize never came to pass, presumably because it just wasn't need on Easy Mode. For example, in the hotel, there's a Hoteltron, and there's a place where a picture is used to set the standard to which all the rooms are supposed to be kept. I assumed at some point I'd need to find a modified photograph that I'd replace to make the rooms different in some way that would help me solve a puzzle. But, nope. Never came up. Still, from what I've seen of the puzzles I missed, I feel pretty good about the decision to play on Easy.

The comedy mostly didn't work for me, but it was usually a gentle eyeroll more than a groan of disgust.

A few of the puzzle solutions were a little nonsensical. I especially did not like the way that some puzzles depend on use of other characters in a way that makes no sense in-story. For example, there's an early puzzle where one character is in a sewer and needs to call a phone number. There's information presented so you know the name of the person you need to call, but no way for the character in the sewer to actually get that person's number. You switch to another character, read the phone book to figure out the number, and then just switch to the other character to make the call. It works, of course, but it makes no sense in the world of the game.

I also found the backer fill-ins to be kind of tedious. Every time where you find a list of 100 names in a phone book or on some kind of jokey list it was obvious it was only there to insert backer names. I hope that, to the extent games keep getting made via Kickstarter, developers start finding better incentives. It just makes the game feel a bit junky.

Anyway, I mostly have complaints about this, but it was reasonably enjoyable recreation of old school adventure games. Not updated in ways I would like, not something that would even be an above average version of one of those games if it came out in that era, but a mildly pleasant way to spend 7 hours or so that I did.

Mrlogical, I'm very glad to have your perspective, if it's belatedly. I'm not closing the threads anyhow, so why ever not! The dates are more like... guidelines!
It's super interesting to me to hear how easy mode works. Sounds like it could've been a little more streamlined, but I'm glad the other option is there. And I 100% agree with you, some of the puzzle really were nonsensical, in pure 90s adventure game fashion. Ultimately, I share your view of Thimbleweed Park: it was fun, but par for the course, "mildly pleasant" indeed.
Thanks for chiming in.