• Game: Terrible Toybox's Return to Monkey Island.
• Release Month: September.
• Quick Look: Here (Grubb / Jess).
• Started: 10/12.
• Completed: 12/12.

When I talk about my formative games, they're often those that went out of their way to be more streamlined and accessible to someone who, like myself at that age, was just getting used to the idea of game mechanics and controls and needed something a bit more gentle and approachable as a means of onboarding. That isn't to say that Dungeon Master, the example I turn to whenever RPGs are the topic du jour, was anything close to easy; however, the real-time movement and combat along with its minimal menus meant it was very simple for a young mind to grasp and not get frustrated by when something beyond my ken would get in the way of progress. The same is true for Lucasfilm Games's The Secret of Monkey Island, released way back when in 1990. I had played other adventure games prior to that, usually with a little adult supervision—Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, and Sierra's first two King's Quests—but each time I'd hit a death and have to return to an earlier save it felt like the game was pushing back and punishing me for my curiosity and experimentation. The Secret of Monkey Island, which famously did away with kill-states (for the most part; Guybrush can't hold his breath underwater forever), felt much more accommodating and as a result I fell in love with it immediately. Of course, its hilarious personality and strong cartoon aesthetic (though the visuals were still mostly realistic for what was capable at the time, the humor and attitude sure weren't) contributed just as much.

It wasn't until the shaky fourth game where you fight Rupert Murdoch in a giant monkey mech that I finally lost my attachment to the franchise, having not played the Telltale serials that released since (which are referenced here, if not all that integral to understanding the story otherwise), but I was curious at least to try out this reboot that reunites many of the creative leads of the original game, including eternal curmudgeon Ron Gilbert and Monkey Island co-creator Dave Grossman, for what might be one last hurrah with Guybrush Threepwood, (wannabe) mighty pirate.

Return to Monkey Island definitely feels like the merging of the old and new, and in a knowing way that is deeply connected to a plot that sees old rivals Guybrush and the Dread Zombie Ghost Pirate LeChuck have to contend with a group of fashionable upstart pirate lords who value looting and capitalism over the romance of the high seas as they all chase to be the first to discover the secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush having forgotten to find it in his first adventure. Many characters return, as do locations: Mêlée Island is almost as you remember it, with many screens retaining the same composition/perspective, though certain characters have risen up in the world—Carla the Swordmaster is now the overworked Governor, having replaced Guybrush's beloved Elaine Marley who now dedicates herself to public works—while others, like the inveterate salesman Stan. S. Stanman and hapless thief Otis, are locked away in jail with their many crimes having caught up with them. Beyond Mêlée, though, there's a mix of new areas to discover like the chilly Brrr Muda or the oddly anticlimactic Terror Island, which show up later in the game once you have your own ship. Most of the cast is well-written and well-voice acted, those of note including LeChuck's undead crew (including the hanging skeleton Apple Bob, with the unmistakable voice of Animaniacs's Rob Paulsen) and Stan (voiced by Gavin Hammon doing a very convincing Phil Hartman). Many legacy voice actors return as well, including those for the ever-put-on diminuitive cartographer Wally and boisterous fan favorite Murray the Demonic Talking Skull, whose grandiosity is tested after he is figuratively (and literally) put through the wringer in this game. However, Return to Monkey Island doesn't so much disappear into nostalgia but uses familiar sights and people as a launching point for a whole new adventure that wouldn't have felt out of place had this game come out thirty years ago instead of three months. I would highly recommend some familiarity with the previous games for that reason, but at the same time it's not absolutely essential either as characters tend to be re-introduced with enough detail to help bring newcomers into the fold.

Suffice it to say I was really impressed with what Return to Monkey Island pulled off here. This is an enormous adventure—I think my total runtime was well beyond the ten hour mark—and everything from the puzzle design to the presentation is top notch. The very stylized graphics took some getting used to, but once it dawned on me how close it was to classic Nicktoons (like those from professional nightmare factory Klasky Tsupo) and the more surrealistic Day of the Tentacle I was more accepting of the new look. I'd liken the game to something like Broken Age: a serious attempt to revisit the age of the high-budget graphic adventure before FMV put the franchise out of favor and the Indie and non-English B-game sectors of the industry had to prop it up for a while. Beneath the surface, the game maintains that old vs. new dichotomy with puzzles and mechanical shortcomings that feel like they've long since fallen out of favor: the ever-present annoying Monkey Island mazes are here, where you need a map to find the right set of directions through an otherwise identical series of screens, and the game does the inventory/real estate bloat you'd often see with older adventure games where by the end you have so much trash in your inventory and so many hotspots accessible that it can be a little overwhelming to narrow down the next step. On the other hand, you have modern conveniences like a "highlight all hotspots" button, a very rapid dash if you double-click anywhere, and the game won't even allow you to combine items with other items or hotspots if nothing will result (so no endless "I can't do that"s or "that doesn't work"s). If a character still has pertinent information to impart it'll remain there in their dialogue tree, while conversational dead-ends and jokes will vanish once they've been spoken aloud. Guybrush always carries with him a to-do list if you ever need to recall what objectives you are pursuing at that moment. Even when the game sometimes feels like it's falling back on old bad habits, the accessibility features are able to keep the game grounded and the player motivated towards completing their goals: the developers clearly took lessons on the many years of game development progress since that first Monkey Island game and factored it into this one, and it's one of the most sharply designed point-and-clicks I've had the fortune of playing without necessarily compromising its old-school spirit.

There are some parts of the design that still rankle, though. A game-wide scavenger hunt for trivia cards is bizarrely implemented, for example. The idea is that you will come across trivia cards buried in the environment in almost every screen in the game and once found are added to an album for you to answer at any time. There's four possible answers for each question and getting it right will enshrine the card in the album with a big green tick, though getting it wrong causes the card to disappear requiring that you find it again. As you've probably figured out, the cards you find and their locations are randomzied, and the cards will eventually respawn in the environment after a certain amount of time has passed. However, it's not clear when they'll do so: you could decide to sweep up all the cards in an early chapter but you might find them inexplicably drying up and thus spending a lot of wasted time revisiting screens to see if they've popped back yet. Also, I only learned this after playing but if you have seven trivia cards in your album that you've yet to answer the trivia cards will stop spawning in the environment. Given most of the trivia cards relate to details in the game itself, you might naturally hold off on answering those regarding locations or story details in future acts you have yet to reach, but leaving too many unanswered cards will make it take that much longer for you to gather them all later so it's almost like you're incentivized to take wild guesses on shit you haven't seen yet. The arbitrariness of this system, and the way too esoteric prompts you're sometimes given by the cards (like "how many fish are visible in this underwater scene"), really weakens what was otherwise a neat idea for a silly, optional collectathon. Playing the game it occasionally feels like some of the leads' more player-antagonistic impulses that involve more busywork and less transparency are only barely kept in check by cooler minds, and while that does lend itself to the game's messaging of its increasingly obsessive nature of its middle-aged cast it's a little awkward to countenance.

On the whole, though, I think Return to Monkey Island is an excellent adventure game full of wit, visual (and audial) charm, and smart puzzles that will hopefully set the stage for many more reboots of graphic adventure classics like it, and should be considered the gold standard for same for the immediate future. If you've ever enjoyed a Monkey Island game, or really any of the many Lucasfilm games or Indie tributes that were built on its trailblazing blueprint, Return to Monkey Island is a definite port of call.

Current GOTY

1. Elden Ring
2. Tinykin
3. Tunic
4. Signalis
5. Return to Monkey Island
6. HoloCure

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