"Calling the phone provides some natural friction, in that you'd have to get to a phone (or switch to whoever had the cell phone) and make a call and trip down a hint tree," said Gilbert. In this case, you're not actually calling a person on the phone, but using Thimbleweed Park's in-game phone system to ask the HintTron 3000 for pointers. Gilbert settled on the solution I used back in the day for games like Tex Murphy: a hint line. I'd have been the HintTron 3000 player they feared. While I appreciated the ability to tour so many places at once, the combination of context-specific characters and endless exploration options left me paralyzed. Thimbleweed Park isn't enormous, but compared to the adventure games it builds on from the LucasArts days, it's sprawling. The problem? If players were lost to the point of utter confusion-like I often was-they may not know what item to look at. The team originally built something called the HintTron 3000, an item that would allow you to combine it with any item in the game world and receive a contextual hint. Jokes aside, it's interesting to see how Gilbert and company arrived at their hint system, which appears to have come with plenty of internal protest over whether to design it at all. Next E3, I'll have to think about registering as casual press! (I'm kidding, Ron.) "I know this will cause the hardcore adventure gamer's blood to boil (as it does mine)," wrote designer Ron Gilbert in a blog post earlier this week, "but the lack of hints was widely criticized by some of the more casual press." Months later, the game now has a hint system. A younger Patrick would be shaking their head, but you don't have a kid, bucko. In a world of limited time, I wanted to keep moving. But as I explained to them, I didn't want a story-only mode, I was looking for a crutch to lean on when I'd become exasperated. The game's easier mode, which strips Thimbleweed Park of its most troublesome puzzles, was supposed to be for me. I'd love if there was something similar, so the game could meet me halfway."Īfter publishing that story, I heard from the game's developers, who were curious about my reaction. In one of my favorite puzzlers, The Room, you can ask for multiple hints before it outright tells you what to do next. The game does have an option to throw out most of the puzzles, but that's not what I want to do! I just want the game to give me a small, vague hint. "Clearly, I'm not above looking for help, but Thimbleweed Park doesn't help its case by having a binary choice when it comes to choosing a difficulty.
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