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Thimbleweed Park Blog
blog.thimbleweedpark.com · Company blog · on HN since 2015
The development blog for the adventure game Thimbleweed Park, with posts on engine design, scripting, and testing by Ron Gilbert's team.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it as an interesting development blog, noting its writing on engine design and how long the engine and game took to build.
19HN people shared it
14linked it in comments
7stories submitted
11story points
3 months agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage8 people · first shared 2015
- 2Archives2 people · first shared 2020
- 3Scripting test2 people · first shared 2015
- 4Engine2 people · first shared 2016
- 5Thimbleweed Park officially released1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 6Test system for Adventure Games1 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 7Thimbleweed Park Blog- State of the Game #31 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 8Save Game1 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9You'll be able to play Thimbleweed Park on Thursday, March 30th1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10Thimbleweed Park – 4 Months Post-Kickstarter1 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 11Thimbleweed Park – Pseudo Rooms1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 12Final puzzles1 people · first shared 2017
- 13Pseudorooms1 people · first shared 2020
- 14Switching and inventory1 people · first shared 2015
- 15Roadmap11 people · first shared 2026
What HN people wrote when they linked it
runeb · 2016-09-15
There is a pretty interesting development blog at https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/. Its been a while since I followed it, but at least in the beginning Ron was writing about the game engine design. They also touched upon what you are referring to, and at least for the in-game font you can switch to an old-style mode.
csl · 2016-08-21
Also, the original Lucasfilm Commodore 64 games, such as Maniac Mansion, were cross-compiled on UNIX workstations, transferred over the network and uploaded to running C64s — way back in 1987! (Source: The Thimbleweed Park podcasts [0], which I highly recommend.)
[0]: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com
DanBC · 2015-09-04
probably_wrong · 2026-07-30
The best answer to that question is the development blog they made for the first game:
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/archives.html
At a quick glance: four months for the engine (which they wrote from scratch [1]) and, based on the budget [2], roughly nine months for crowdsourcing and pre-production (setting the overall story and puzzles, deciding on the look of the game, building small proofs-of-concept), seven months for production, three months for testing and bugfixing, and two months for release (which they overshot by three months).
[1] https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/roadmap1.html
[2] https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/budget1.html
acomjean · 2022-04-04
The original post:
https://grumpygamer.com/april_fools_2022
Ron is developer of the Monkey Island adventure games, while at lucas arts, now the IP is owned by Disney.
So he made another adventure game (similar but different) called "thimbleweed park". I played through. It was fun.
He made a development blog, while making it (it was a kickstarter).
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com
but now I have no idea if this new thing is real or not...
atesti · 2017-04-18
If you like adventure games, go to
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/final_puzzles
and read the complete blog and play the excellent game out now!
mjlee · 2016-07-24
For those who aren't yet aware, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (of Secret of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion fame) are currently developing Thimbleweed Park - due to release in early 2017.
Dev blog here:
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/
exlurker · 2016-04-15
Mark Ferrari also teamed up with Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (et al) to create a new 2D adventure game called Thimbleweed Park[1] (No affiliation!) - awesome backgrounds by Ferrari!
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/
pygy_ · 2016-03-22
The dev blog is a treasure trove.
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/
taeric · 2015-01-13
It is odd to read this just after checking for updates on http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/.
Otherwise, this is no different than any other medium, is it? Content curation is hard. Pretty much period.
jupiter90000 · 2016-07-13
Ron Gilbert is using Squirrel as a scripting language in the game Thimbleweed Park [1]. For someone developing games for as long as he has, I think it lends some credibility to it (though I would still evaluate it before I choose to use it for my use cases).
[1] https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/text_tron_3000
potomak · 2016-06-12
unhammer · 2015-09-04
He writes that Disney owns the rights and isn't showing signs of wanting to do anything about it. However, check out the first reward-tier on his new game: http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/backer :)
crivabene · 2015-04-13
Ron Gilbert chose Squirrel as the scripting engine of Thimbleweed Park: http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/scripting_test
If anyone is interested, the development blog is full of examples of how it is being used in the game:
http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/scrolling_rooms
http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/switching_and_inventory