Ron Gilbert says modern adventures "get too lost in story"

Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick drew in more than $626,000 in Kickstarter support for their new game, Thimbleweed Park. It's a point-and-click adventure in the style of the LucasArts classics of the 80s and 90s, and in fact the Kickstarter pitch described it as "the true spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island," two games (among many) they helped create. And that, Gilbert told our sister site, GamesRadar, means puzzles, not story, will be the priority.

Perhaps predictably, he also believes that games have gotten easier since he got into the business. "That’s not necessarily a bad thing, there are very different kinds of people playing games these days and they are a lot more ‘casual’," he continued. "But there are also people that like hard games, especially adventure games, and for us the difficulty is part of making a classic adventure game."

I agree wholeheartedly that modern games are easier than their forebears from decades past, but in the case of adventure games I don't actually mind at all. Story-focused adventures like Primordia, Book of Unwritten Tales, Machinarium, and Memoria are what drew me back to the genre after a serious early-90s burnout on Sierra-style fare; and to this day, few things enrage me as quickly as having to open a stuck window with nothing but a coffee cup, a handful of badger fur, and toothpaste. Fortunately, Thimbleweed Park will have an "easy mode" for players (like me) who don't want to put up with a game that's designed specifically to confound them—a smart concession, I think, to changing times.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.