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Here's some good news for point-and-click adventure games to brighten their week.
Terrible Toybox, the company founded by Lucasfilm Games' legends Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, has just announced a sequel to its 2017 point-and-click adventure game Thimbleweed Park.
The news was shared online yesterday, with Gilbert publishing a blog post about the announcement on his personal website, Grumpy Gamer, where he joked, "I have good news and bad news." He followed this up by announcing "that we just started production on Thimbleweed Park 2, due out in early 2028," before revealing, "There is no bad news" after all; "It’s all good news."
Thimbleweed Park, as you may recall, was Terrible Toybox's debut game (the company has since gone on to develop three other games, including the Thimbleweed Park miniadventure Delores, Return to Monkey Island and Death By Scrolling) and initially came about through a successful Kickstarter campaign launched in 2014, which raised over $600,000 in total.
Designed as a spiritual successor to classic Lucasfilm Games' SCUMM titles like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mind Benders, it followed a number of protagonists in a strange town, ranging from a pair of FBI agents to a sweary clown, an aspiring game developer and a ghost. The central throughline, meanwhile, was a mystery involving the secrets of the recently deceased owner of the town's PillowTronics robotics company, with the characters questioning the locals as they try to uncover what exactly is going on beneath the place's quiet exterior.
According to Gilbert, the sequel will be self-published with the help of a private investor and is coming to Windows, Mac, and Linux (via Steam), with a GOG version also planned. Gilbert will also be doing a blog for the project on his website, so if you want to follow along with its development, make sure to sign up.
As for who else is developing it alongside Gilbert, it seems the original team is all back, with fellow Lucasfilm legends Mark Ferrari, Gary Winnick, and David Fox on board, alongside the experienced adventure game developers Octavi Navarro and Robert Megone.
Here's a description of the new game's story:
"Welcome back to Thimbleweed Park. This time the dead body is at the Edmund Mansion, and Agents Ray and Reyes are back to investigate… or are they?
In a point-and-click spoof of a classic whodunit, everyone in the Mansion is a suspect and the murderer will be confronted by our detectives. If you can find them. Spoiler: It’s not the butler.
By the end of another long, strange night in Thimbleweed Park, you’ll have more questions than answers.
Not really a sequel. Not really a prequel. It’s more Thimbleweed Park and just as weird.
And just like last time, in a town like Thimbleweed Park, a dead body is the least of your problems."
To celebrate the news, Terrible Toybox has put the original game on sale on Steam, Switch, iOS, and Google Play. In other words, if you haven't checked it out before, now's your chance.