Grumpy Gamer

His website is pretty fun. https://grumpygamer.com/ He also blogged the development of tumbleweed park https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/archives.html

To deliver a vertical slice you also create hacks left and right and they quite often then later stand in the way of actually delivering a proper product. I remember the blog post by Ron Gilbert where he presented Da Vinci's Vertical Slice [1] and it still sits with me as one of the best way to present the issues. A vertical slice is not an MVP because people would never consider it minimally viable. It's a tiny product but it's completely polished and it's for a consumer of one: the publisher. [1]: https://grumpygamer.com/vertical_slice/

This is a nice (short) post, but the one with the great storytelling was 2015's celebration: https://grumpygamer.com/monkey25

Ron Gilbert directly addresses the use of pixel art in a blog post. Pixel art is what they used due the time and circumstances of the original games, not because they like pixel art better than other media. https://grumpygamer.com/when_i_made_another_monkeyisland > Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art. > When Dave and I first started brainstorming Return to Monkey Island we talked about pixel art, but it didn't feel right. We didn't want to make a retro game. You can't read an article about Thimbleweed Park without it being called a "throwback game". I didn't want Return to Monkey Island to be just a throwback game, I wanted to keep moving Monkey Island forward because it's interesting, fun, and exciting. It's what the Monkey Island games have always done. There's also a talk by (I think) Mark Ferrari, where he talks about how they hired artists for these classic pixel art games. Artists were hired on the strength of their art skills, and they had to adapt to the pixel medium in order to make those classic games. Easier to hire an artist and train them to make pixel art, rather than hire a pixel pusher and teach them to make art.

I was not a Sierra adventure fan (except Gabriel Knight), but I loved EVERY ONE of the Lucasfilm Games. Why? I think they managed perfection in these four areas: ACCESS, FUN, CHARACTERS, DESIGN ACCESS: You fired up the game and could immediately start playing. Most of the games had no or very short intros or cutscenes. Lucasfilm was very strong at telling the story throughout the game. "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be a pirate" -> There you go! Controls were also very easy, I think they were even the first games that you could play through by only using your mouse. That's important, because you could just literally lean back and play. FUN Maybe it's just me (obviously not) but Gilbert's and Schafer's writing style, that's my idea of fun! Well written, perfectly executed and timed. Often with very few or no words at all. Sometimes Bernard or Guybrush just turned to you and said nothing…all said! CHARACTERS The teams put a lot of effort in creating unique characters. Why the hell do I know names like Guybrush, Elaine, Stan, Bernard, Hoagie, Laverne, Ben, Bobbin, Manny, Glottis; but I can hardly remember any other adventure game character names. It's because I was emotionally bounded with them. They were mostly struggling with their environment but managed their obstacles often with unorthodox methods. DESIGN Especially Ron Gilbert and Hal Barwood established adventure game design that is still considered standard today. Brought to fame by Ron's article "Why…

The link should probably be https://grumpygamer.com/making_ip/

> Not to be mean, but this has the trifecta of amateur programming But you are being mean. Also, the guy who wrote the article is no amateur, but a seasoned veteran who's likely been storing floats in files for decades. Check him out, you might be surprised. https://www.grumpygamer.com/about/

Is this inspired by Death by Scrolling, the upcoming video game by Ron Gilbert? https://www.grumpygamer.com/deathbyscrolling5/ Even the fire effect coming after you looks similar.

Ron Gilbert's 1989 "Why Adventure Games Suck And What We Can Do About It" https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck/

Yeah, it's essentially https://grumpygamer.com/rtmi_pdc/ where the items are nodes and the edges are item interactions, and you're trying to carve out a subgraph for whatever your definition is of a good adventure game.

Close, but not quite. Monkey Island art was done on the PC version of Deluxe Paint, where the filename would have been "guybrush.lbm". "guy.brush" never existed, as per Ron Gilbert himself: https://grumpygamer.com/guybrush_fact_fiction

The same engine that was used earlier by "Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure": https://grumpygamer.com/delores_dev

Ron Gilbert covers that in this blog post: https://www.grumpygamer.com/when_i_made_another_monkeyisland > I have made one pixel art game in my entire career and that was Thimbleweed Park. Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art. ...

Read it from the man himself - and also common myths around the filename: https://grumpygamer.com/guybrush_fact_fiction

From 2013: "If I end up being able to make this game at some point, we all might find that it fits nicely in between Monkey Island 2 and Curse of Monkey Island." https://grumpygamer.com/just_to_clarify_point_12

As I was confused by the quote "Ron Gilbert told me he'd never make another Monkey Island unless...", it seems to come from this: > That quote is a reference to a manifesto Gilbert wrote in 2013 about his dreams of creating another Monkey Island game [https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland]. The post made clear that Monkey Island would never officially return unless Gilbert owned the series' IP. "I've spent too much of my life creating and making things other people own," Gilbert wrote. "Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I would encourage it." Found at https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/ron-gilbert-confirms-a-new-monk…

Someone found a tweet of his saying that if he'd ever release a new Monkey Island game, he'd announce it on April Fool's Day. So he did, and of course nobody believed him. But 3 days later he posted this: https://grumpygamer.com/return_to_monkey_island

A while ago Ron Gilbert laid out what it'd look like if and when he was able to make another Monkey Island game: https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland. He said he'd fork off the Monkey Island canon after the 2nd game, but also "that doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that." So I guess Murray (and using Dominic Armato as the voice of Guybrush) are part of that.

Ron Gilbert on "conditions" for making a new Monkey island [2013] https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland

Delores: A Thimbleweed Park mini-adventure is a point-and-click adventure game for PC from the developer of Thimbleweed Park, a higher-budget kickstartered point-and-click adventure. Here's the into blog post: https://grumpygamer.com/what_i_did_during_the_pandemic

Explained in the blog post https://grumpygamer.com/delores_dev

He has been making a living out of computer games for decades. He shared more context about the release here: https://grumpygamer.com/delores_dev

"Grumpy Gamer" is Ron Gilbert, responsible for SCUMM, Monkey Island, Humongous Entertainment, and more: https://grumpygamer.com/about

Just a few days ago HN had a posting from way back when (Ron Gilbert, 1989) explaining exactly how this game needs polishing: https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck

Ron has said "The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned the IP." https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland

Very relevant Ron Gilbert comic (gunshot sound warning) http://grumpygamer.com/grumpy_comic_5

He has written about it at length: http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland There's no way to force Disney to sell. There's no reason for Ron to do a MI game that he didn't have creative control of, since it still wouldn't be his vision. There's just no good way to solve the problem at this point.

I think it's machine translated. I can't think of another reason for writing "The adventure begins in Bar Scumm", when the bar in the game is called the Scumm Bar. The part written by Gilbert was actually taken directly from his blog and can be found at http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland EDIT: Except they randomly capitalized words, removed random parts of sentences to make them incomprehensible, and inserted the word "blackberries" in the middle of a sentence. The more I look at this article, the weirder it gets.