Thimbleweed Park Review

Thimbleweed Park

Release: September 21, 2017
Publisher: Terrible Toybox
Developer: Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnic
Genre: Adventure, Indie, Switch Reviews
PEGI: T
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If you’ve ever played Manic Mansion or Monkey Island or King’s Quest or any number of Adventure games and loved them, then boy do I have a new Switch game for you! Let me take you to Thimbleweed Park. Come on now. Nobody here bites, not even that cursing clown…

I love Thimbleweed Park’s story. It is so crazy, out there, and utterly delightful. If you like Adventure games at all, you will love the things that this game comes up with! Not only that, but the game’s dialogue is wonderful. There are so many fourth wall breaking moments and other really funny things.

All of the characters in the game are really good too. I miss them all, yes, even the cursing clown! The story, dialogue, and characters will make you addicted to this game. You’ll just have to find out what happens next!

I highly recommend playing the game on the Casual mode first to just purely enjoy the game’s story, characters, and setting. Then, if you love this game’s story as much as I do, go back and play the game again in the harder mode. There are more puzzles and even more crazy, wonderful things to see and do! Thimbleweed Park’s story is worth the return trip.

What about its gameplay though? Did I enjoy playing the game too?

I’m a huge fan of Thimbleweed Park’s gameplay, but then, I love adventure games. The gameplay here is very traditional for these types of games. The player is given a menu with all the basic commands you’d need: Look At, Push, Pull, Give, Use, etc. There is a tutorial at the beginning of the game that tries to explain how to use the commands. If you’re an adventure game newbie, you’ll want to read this stuff.

Thimbleweed Park doesn’t hold your hand. Even in Casual mode, you could very well get stumped by some of the game’s puzzles. That said, even though Thimbleweed Park doesn’t hold your hand, it does offer you help if you know where to look! Hint: check the phonebook Luke.

Thank goodness for that help because I did get stuck a lot. With the game’s help though, I managed to finish the story! And I want to play the game again. Right this second. Excuse me a moment…

…ok I’m back. I have been playing the hard mode for my second playthrough of Thimbleweed Park. This mode definitly lives up to its name, but again, you can find help and you’ll need it!

Not everything is perfect about Thimbleweed Park though. The game’s touch screen controls do take a bit of time to get use to. I’m starting to get the hang of them a bit more in my second playthrough of the game. I do think that playing this game in handheld mode is the best way to play it.

With handheld mode, you have the option of using both touch screen controls and the analog stick/buttons. I found myself alternating between the two types of controls a lot and didn’t find that cumbersome.

Thimbleweed Park looks great on the Switch’s handheld screen and on the TV too. Thimbleweed Park is a good looking adventure game!

Thimbleweed Park is an adventure game and so high-end graphics are not its major concern. However, I do think that Thimbleweed Park is one of the best looking adventures I’ve ever seen. The characters and places you visit in this game are very detailed and Thimbleweed Park is a good call back to old adventure games while also being a “modern” game too.

Oh and there is a visual twist somewhere in this game that is one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen a game do. I know thats vague but I don’t want to spoil that plot twist!

As for the game’s audio, the best thing about it is the voice acting. I thought all of the voice acting was high quality and enjoyed the voices a lot. The game doesn’t have much in the way of a soundtrack and its sound effects are ok. The voice acting in this game more than makes up for the audio in other places.

Thimbleweed Park, overall, is a very good game. If you like Adventure games and you have a Nintendo Switch, I highly recommend this game.

Thimbleweed Park isn’t perfect but it absolutely delivers in the areas where Adventure games should deliver: dialogue, story, weird characters, and interesting puzzles. You’ll want to find out out just where Thimbleweed Park is going. And you’ll want to play the game more than once in order to get the full story!

Sure, I wish the game’s controls were easy to learn and it would have been great to have a cool soundtrack, but otherwise, this is an Adventure game you should check out if you love this sort of thing. Let’s support this genre on Switch! I want to see more of these games.

Thanks to Terrible Toybox PR for providing a review copy of this game. Thimbleweed Park is now available for the Nintendo Switch eshop. Remember: the Signals Are Strong Tonight.

Trailer