Ron Gilbert
Latest
Return to Monkey Island's first gameplay trailer is a swashbuckling trip of nostalgia
When Return to Monkey Island arrives later this year, players will finally discover the secret of Monkey Island.
A Monkey Island sequel from creator Ron Gilbert is coming this year
'Return to Monkey Island' is the first new entry in the series since 2009.
Ron Gilbert's new 2D adventure game passes crowdfunding goal
Last week we brought you word of Thimbleweed Park, a new yet classically-styled 2D adventure game from Maniac Mansion designers Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. At the time the duo were seeking $375,000 to fund the game's development - a goal they reached just this morning. Anticipating the possibility of a massive outpouring of support, Ron Gilbert updated the Kickstarter page over the course of the weekend to outline stretch goals for Thimbleweed Park. If, in its remaining 24 days, the fundraiser reaches $425,000 the developers will have the game translated into German, Spanish, French and Italian. At $525,000, Thimbleweed Park will appear on iOS and Android devices. The big one, full voice acting for Thimbleweed Park, comes available at $625,000. Thimbleweed Park will appear on PC, Mac and Linux platforms. No release date has yet been announced. [Image: Disney/Ron Gilbert/Gary Winnick]
Maniac Mansion designers seek funding for new 2D adventure
Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, the duo behind the classic LucasArts adventure game Maniac Mansion, have launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new point and click 2D adventure dubbed Thimbleweed Park. "Why do we want to make Thimbleweed Park? Because we miss classic adventures and all their innocence and charm," reads the game's Kickstarter page. "They were fun and would put a smile on your face. We want to make one of those again and we want to do it right. We don't want to make a game 'inspired by,' or 'paying homage to' classic point & click adventures, we want to make a real classic point & click adventure." Plot details are currently barebones, but Thimbleweed Park tells the story of two detectives investigating a corpse found on the outskirts of a once-prosperous, but now defunct town. Players can switch at will between five playable characters, and Thimbleweed Park boasts multiple endings, depending on how you go about completing the story. Gilbert and Winnick hope to raise $375,000 to fund Thimbleweed Park's development, of which it has so far raised $6,192. If you're interested in supporting the project (or just want to save a pixelated hamster) visit the game's Kickstarter page. [Image: Disney/Ron Gilbert/Gary Winnick]
Start digging with The Cave on Android
Android fans need go without oddball adventure game The Cave no longer, as the game found its way to that platform late last week. The Cave costs $4.99 on the Google Play store, and arrived a few weeks after making an appearance on Ouya. The adventure game comes from The Secret of Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert and Double Fine, the developer Gilbert left in March. The Cave first launched in January on PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Linux and Wii U. Our review of the XBLA version considered it the "cruelest of Double Fine's games," noting its sharp writing and somewhat tiresome repetition.
Daily iPhone App: Scurvy Scallywags is great fun for landlubbers or first mates
Ron Gilbert is the great game designer mind behind popular series like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and the recent Deathspank games. His latest project is called Scurvy Scallywags, and arrived on iOS last week. The game is great -- it's a match-3 title that makes use of some excellent RPG and combat mechanics. While it's not the most polished thing on the App Store, there's a whole lot of piratey fun to be had. Gilbert (and his fellow developers) are obviously big pirate fans -- you may remember the great shanty scene from Monkey Island -- and this game has no lack of nice piratey touches, including hats, faces, and clothing to unlock, ships to build through a crafting system, and a whole lot of great music. The main goal of your match three adventures is to re-discover a lost pirate shanty. Whenever you come across a new verse, the gang of scabby buccaneers will happily sing it for you. There's also a fun twist in moving your pirate around the board. Whenever you match pieces, new ones will come in from the direction that you moved to match. Your pirate and enemy pirates are all in tile spots on the board, which means that with some nimble matching, you can keep your pirate away from the bad guys until you're ready to throw down in each stage. Scurvy Scallywags is great fun. I do wish the game was a little more full-featured -- most of the pieces you'll be matching are actually meaningless garbage pieces, and it would have been nice to give those some kind of function. But otherwise, the design is great, and the game has an excellent "just one more stage" feeling to keep you playing for a long time. Scurvy Scallywags is available on the App Store now for just 99 cents.
Ron Gilbert's Scurvy Scallywags sings a salty sea shanty
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Ron Gilbert's Beep Games has a new game out on iOS called Scurvy Scallywags (subtitle: In the Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty), and it's a match-three puzzle game with light RPG elements and plenty of pirate humor. It's only 99 cents in the App Store right now, and that's probably all of the inspiration you need to go and download it, right matey? Oh all right, ye lousy landlubbers, I can put an X on yer treasure maps for ye. Scallywags is a bit of pirate-infused joy. It's a simple game with mechanics that don't always light the cannon fuse, but it's got enough charm, depth, and solid fun to justify the very cheap cost of admission. Plus, there are real sea shanties included.%Gallery-188719%
Ron Gilbert's Scurvy Scallywags plots course to iOS today
Ron Gilbert's latest, Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty, launches on iOS today as a universal app for $.99. Scurvy Scallywags is a pirate-themed match-three game with RPG elements. Players explore themed islands, match symbols and collect treasure. Oh, the life of a pirate! Iconic game designer Ron Gilbert is best known for his time at LucasArts back in the '90s, where he helped to create Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. This year, Ron Gilbert completed a stint at Double Fine Productions working on co-op adventure game The Cave. %Gallery-188719%
Ron Gilbert imagines a new, independent Monkey Island game
Ron Gilbert is not making another Monkey Island game – we repeat, Gilbert is not making another Monkey Island game – but if he did, he has a few ideas for what it would look, feel and play like. In his latest Grumpy Gamer blog post, Gilbert lists upgrades and changes he'd want in a new Monkey Island game, including "enhanced low-res" visuals, hardcore adventure mechanics with minimal hand-holding, a huge inventory and dialogue puzzles.Gilbert would want to rebuild the SCUMM language, in terms of its ability to rapidly iterate new ideas: "SCUMM lived and breathed adventure games. I'd build an engine and a language where funny ideas can be laughed about at lunch and be in the game that afternoon. SCUMM did that. It's something that is getting lost today."Gilbert's wish list includes a team of 10 people or fewer, a boxed game, full voice acting, and a title of Monkey Island 3a, since "all the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist" in his universe. He's even envisioned a Kickstarter free of frills or fancy videos, one that doesn't attempt to break any money-making records. Gilbert would need to own and control every aspect of the IP, meaning he wouldn't look for a publisher, and Kickstarter would indeed be an option.Most shocking, though, is number 14 on Gilbert's list: "The press won't get advanced copies." Why do you tease so good, Gilbert?
Ron Gilbert's next game, Scurvy Scallywags, is a pirate match-3 RPG
Ron Gilbert left Double Fine earlier this month with intentions to delve into all those games "left to be designed," but first he's working on a mobile game with Deathspank co-creator Clayton Kauzlaric. It's called Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG.Scurvy Scallywags is, in its simplest terms, a match-three game. But it has a twist: After a match, rather than the pieces falling straight down, the board collapses in the direction you swipe. It's an intuitive way to play, Gilbert writes on his blog."An odd side effect of doing this was you could move pieces around the board," he says. "So unlike Puzzle Quest – and just about every other match-three RPG that sprang up after it – in Scurvy Scallywags you actually move your hero/pirate around the board and position her/him next to enemies to do battle. It creates this new layer to the matching that is a lot of fun."Gilbert hopes to have Scurvy Scallywags out on iOS in the "next month or so," with plans to port it to Android later on. After that, he'll probably start working on every other game that hasn't yet been designed.
Ron Gilbert leaves Double Fine Productions
Veteran designer and The Cave creator Ron Gilbert announced his departure from Double Fine Productions to "plot his next move" in the industry. In a post on his blog, Gilbert profusely thanked his former colleagues and studio founder Tim Schafer, saying it was a "true pleasure to work with every one of them," and simply that it was time to move on.Schafer and Gilbert, who co-wrote The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2, reprised their working relationship in 2010 when Gilbert joined Double Fine Productions. After two years of toil, Gilbert released the literally full-of-junk The Cave earlier this year.Gilbert's short-term plan is to continue working with DeathSpank co-creator Clayton Kauzlaric on an iOS game, which he revealed has the catchy moniker of Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG - the man does like his pirates. But clearly Gilbert has intentions beyond that, with the 49-year-old arbiter of adventure pointedly noting there are "so many games left to be designed."
Ron Gilbert, MC Frontalot, RoosterTeeth, more confirmed for PAX AUS
Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert will give the keynote at the upcoming PAX Australia, Penny Arcade has announced. Gilbert most recently worked on The Cave for Double Fine, and will kick off the Penny Arcade Expo's Australian branch with a "storytime" session, presumably about his work in the glory days of adventure gaming, creating the SCUMM interpreter, and his most recent work on DeathSpank and at Double Fine.Other announced guests for the show include musicians The Protomen and MC Frontalot, and video makers RoosterTeeth are also set to appear – and we're sure founders Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are headed down under, too. PAX Australia is set to take place at the Melbourne Showgrounds on July 19-21, 2013, and there are still tickets available for the first two days right now.
The Cave review: Seven spelunkers, none decent
The Cave is an adventure game, obviously. It's littered with puzzles and pieces of junk destined to become the only objects in the world worth having. The cave itself is a sentient, subterranean narrator, enveloping seven different explorers in a patchwork of dream-like environments that not only pertain to them, but contain the kind of contorted contexts in which a femur and a parrot are essential parts of progress.Those are all signs of the classic adventure, tinged with the incongruous vending machines, gift shops and eternally stranded island hermits you expect from a Ron Gilbert game. But there's something else inside The Cave, a familiar cynicism and cleverness that gradually emerges as each spelunker hits rock bottom. These people – even the monk and the chivalrous knight – are egotistical, unpleasant kleptomaniacs, and you're one of them.%Gallery-164293%
The Cave's latest character roster trailer is adventurous
This trailer for Double Fine's The Cave introduces three more of the game's playable characters. The video teases the back-stories of The Adventurer, The Knight and The Time Traveler. The last character trailer for the game detailed The Hillbilly, The Scientist and The Monk. Both trailers show The Twins, which actually makes sense, the more we think about it.The Cave will launch in January 2013 on Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
The Cave trailer introduces playable characters
This trailer for Double Fine's The Cave has said cave talking about the game's diverse cast of characters. The game is heading to Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in January 2013.
'Indie Speed Run' online game jam judged by Kellee Santiago, Ron Gilbert, Notch, et al
Indie Speed Run, despite the name, is surprisingly not what we call the Friday nights we spend practicing our no-death VVVVVV runs. It is, however, the name of a new online game jam, one which runs from now until January 6.The way it works is pretty straight-forward: Developers visit the official website and register as a participant. Once enrolled, each contender (and/or team of contenders) has 48 hours to create a game using two secret elements given only to them, and while those 48 hours must be consecutive, they can occur anytime between now and when the event ends in January.Once the event does end, every game created during its span will be made freely available on the official site. Meanwhile, a star-studded panel of judges (Kellee Santiago, Ron Gilbert, Notch, Dino Patti, Trent Oster, Jason Rohrer and Vander Caballero) will determine which team is most deserving of Indie Speed Run's $2,500 grand prize and will announce a winner February 5.
The Cave unearths some environmental screenshots
Double Fine's adventure platformer The Cave is destined for Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U in 2013, and will probably look a lot like these screens, which popped up on All Games Beta.These new shots show off what looks to be a cave (gasp) and several other environments (spoiler warning goes here). The Cave, from adventure veteran Ron Gilbert, has a ragtag group of travelers running around a mysterious talking cavern, three at a time. Different combinations of characters unlock different aspects of the game, perhaps including some of these pictured areas.%Gallery-164293%
Inside the mind of Ron Gilbert
Sega's booth was as loud and vibrant as the rest at E3 2012, humming with the frantic energy of a beehive that had just been kicked. Lacking a quiet corner, it was in the middle of Sega's bustling booth that I struck up an impromptu conversation with legendary adventure game designer Ron Gilbert.I told the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion designer that I wanted to get inside his head, to find out where he gleans his inspiration from when starting new projects."You don't want to be in this head," Gilbert promised.%Gallery-156063%
The Cave opens up to adventurers in 2013, care of Ron Gilbert and Double Fine
Double Fine and Sega have officially announced The Cave, a side-scrolling, multi-character adventure game coming to Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC in 2013. Led by Ron Gilbert, The Cave sees an eclectic cluster of impromptu spelunkers – including a scientist, a monk, a knight and a time traveler – finding their fortunes (and perhaps more) in the titular, mysterious and, err, "sultry" subterranean network. That's right: The Cave can speak.The rest of the protagonists are silent, but up to three can venture into The Cave at a time. After picking your trio, you guide them all deeper into the seamless network of underground rooms, switching control between each to solve puzzles and exploit their unique abilities. The knight, for instance, can activate a guardian angel that protects him from flames and falls, while the hillbilly can hold his breath underwater forever. (Take that, Guybrush Threepwood!)The game can be completed with any combination of characters, but certain endings and unique areas are locked to individual characters. Having the knight in your group, for example, will open up the medieval castle and its puzzles for play. And yes, there just happens to be a castle buried deep within in The Cave. With a "New Grog" vending machine (among other inharmonious objects) cropping up in the network's lower bowels, we think it's safe to say that Ron Gilbert's touch is evident throughout the game.He also programmed the whole thing himself, we think. Probably.%Gallery-156063%
Sega publishing Ron Gilbert's Double Fine game
It's been almost two weeks since Double Fine and Ron Gilbert gave us our first glimpse of their new game (different from Double Fine Adventure, the Kickstarter project), and today Sega all but outed itself as the publisher.After tweeting a link to the image above, the official Sega account has been silent on the matte. It's easy to see the images Gilbert's been teasing match up with the shaded area above. All that remains is the official announcement.
