Thimbleweed Park trailer explores the character of Delores

Thimbleweed Park, the point-and-click adventure from some of the people behind Maniac Mansion, continues to impress, not least because of the extraordinary pixel art of Mark Ferrari and Octavi Navarro. The latest trailer, released to coincide with Gamescom, features that pixel art aplenty, while focusing on one of the game's multiple playable characters: Delores Edmund, heiress to a pillow factory. But it's a pretty good setup for the game as a whole, its central mystery of a murdered person teased, oh but also there are ghosts.

Small towns continue to be some of the most exciting settings for games, particularly if they're explored in sufficient detail. You're learning a place as you explore, getting to know the inhabitants and the history of a manageably small location, and that sort of rich connection to a place is why people keep coming back to Twin Peaks, Earthbound, and things like Twin Peaks and Earthbound. I'm hoping Thimbleweed Park will be like that, and I'm definitely getting that vibe, although obviously we've not seen much of the game yet. We'll know for sure when it releases, early next year.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.