The battery took me a little while also (I hadn’t found the fence yet), and I never actually solved the crystal puzzle (finished the game without solving it) - I’ve been planning to return and figure that one out.
The check register sat me back a night. The rest was a stroll in the park.
I was a bit stumped by the check register at first as well. I finally took some time to stop and think… how would I solve this problem in real life? That’s when I thought to go to the bank (which of course, provided the necessary clues to continue). I had been bypassing the bank for so long as it was closed earlier in the game, that I didn’t think to check if it had reopened for business. I really appreciated that the puzzles in Thimbleweed Park could be solved with rational thinking and not with the approach of random: 'try this inventory object with that".
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Having a few ‘look at’-able footprints leading from the puddle would have been extremely useful. The ‘Sekrit Meeting’ puzzle is logical, but as others have said, there are too many distractions surrounding it. I already used the forest for the thimbleberries and the navigator head easter egg, so I thought there weren’t any more things to do with it. Same with the radioactive waste- once I activated the Quickie Pal easter egg I figured that was it.
I also wasted a lot of time trying to get the crystal- I wish there would have been some sort of ‘you can’t do that yet’ indication. There were a few other puzzles like that.
But overall, I liked the majority of the puzzles. I’m ashamed to admit it took me forever to figure out what to do with the pocket watch!
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I was at least fairly stumped for some time on two notable puzzles that require Push/Pull - namely Ransome’s trampoline to find the joke book page, and getting the book of the dead from Morena’s, by moving the ladder.
The hardest was definitely getting to the seckrit meeting - I now realize I’ve completely missed the navigator’s head and succumbed to a hint for the glowing waste in the puddle.
I agree. The whole thing with the battery and the puddle took me forever. I had never seen anyone walk through the forest, so the last place where I thought I had to walk in to solve the puzzle was the forest.
Another thing that I was never told as a player (or that I didn’t realize) was that the bank was open again. I got so mad when I randomly tried to get in and I finally could and I didn’t know why.
Yeah, trying to figure out how to charge the battery was a pain. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who tried to get Franklin to ‘zap’ the battery or to use the wires in the sewer.
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For me and @JennaStarar it was definitely the waste in the puddle, we were certain Sepp’s head had something to do with the forest puzzle! (wish the in-joke switch had been available then, we’d have known it was just a red herring! 
)
Hi! First post here.
Great forum software. Really like it!
Back on topic…
Puddle: I can’t remember - were there footsteps at all, when someone walks through the water-only puddle? That would have helped me a lot. Not sure I need to look at them, though.
Also, even if it’s just a game and there seems to be something like adventure-game-logic, I don’t want to pour radioactive waste anywhere to the environment - unless you’re some kind of obvious villain. Let alone near a picturesque forest.
@TWP staff: Has this always been straightforward for the play testers? 
Like RCM, I tried hard to “solve” the crystal puzzle at the penthouse. When you’re stuck with the puddle puzzle it seems like you end up with this puzzle that gives you the impression that you have to solve it to progress. I agree that it’s a bit unfortunate the opportunity to “solve” this is only triggered by how far you progressed in the game. At a certain point, an additional text line appears in the conversation with Xavier.
I thought that Xavier staring conspicuously at the view without moving might have anything to do how I need to solve it. Like blowing something up on the TWP arial or climbing the hotel front to scare Xavier. I even thought I might accomplish something with Ransome’s balloon and let it fly with some payload in front of the hotel. 
For me, it was a matter of overlooking stuff.
It took me forever to find the gas canister and the tape … and they were both right there. I just didn’t see them. Also in one case I was convinced I had tried something that hadn’t worked when I must have just clicked on the wrong pixel.
I also had issues with the getting Ransom on the trampoline cause I didn’t understand the hint (language-wise) and was too proud to look up the word, so trial and error it was on that part.
To me it felt like I failed on the easier ones while I did the more hard ones like a champ.
Great game.
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Most difficult for me was definitely the whole secret bunker/truck battery and everything leading up to it, including the “radioactive waste in the puddle” part. Getting a copy of the map was difficult for me, too, because I had no idea how to get a nickel.
Greetings, folks!
My two hardest puzzles:
-
“Opening” the check register. I tried to pick it up, and I’m almost positive I tried to use it, and when those failed I decided it was of no interest. I never realized it was something I could open, especially not when I couldn’t pick it up.
-
Moving the ladders to get to the top of Madame Morena’s shelves. It never crossed my mind that the shelves were much higher than what I saw, and I could tell there was nothing of interest to me up there. Not being able to get to the second ladder didn’t seem like an issue. I decided it was made unavailable to me by Morena seeing as how she didn’t like my touching her books in the first place.
Other than that the whole game flowed very smoothly for me and it was great experiencing this type of game again! A triumphant return to point and click adventure games, and I’d be happy to back future projects!
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I was stuck four times in total, and though I did try different things to see whether I could make progress, I had to resort to a walkthrough to get unstuck:
- Getting the ghost out of the elevator: I had totally overlooked or forgotten about the TV on the 10th floor, and while I tried turning TVs inside rooms to her favourite program, and even leaving the door open, it would not work.
- Getting the watch repair tools. Can’t count how many times I made poor Sexy Riker empty his stomach, in order to try various things while he was in his room. When even Ransome did not want to enter (totally out of character, IMO!), and there was no way to keep the door from closing, I gave up.
- Getting the book of the dead. I do not remember seeing any clue as to where it might be hidden, and never stumbled upon it by chance.
- Opening the factory office door. I had discovered the safe behind the painting in Uncle Chucks lab, but totally overlooked the key next to it. I could not imagine how to get into the office, other than perhaps in a similar way I gained entry to the crypt. But there was nothing alive nearby the factory that might have been used to bring Franklin onsite.
There were one or two other things that I could not solve immediately, but for the most part there were other things to do besides, allowing progress in other areas at least. With the stuff above, however, no more progress was possible and I quickly ran out of things to try.
I can honestly say that Thimbleweed Park is the very first adventure game that I have managed to finish and complete satisfactorily without a walkthrough or guide. That is an achievement in itself!
However, I did get stuck at two points due to missing some details. It’s the non-linear nature of the game-play that has me finding puzzle solutions before I find the puzzle, or solving myriad little puzzles in between two steps of a larger puzzle, causing me to lose the context between them.
Those two puzzles had me stuck for days, almost an entire week on one of them! I was desperate, frustrated, and my wife even stopped playing with me because she was so frustrated. The game ceased to be fun at all.
The first puzzle was starting the fire in Delores’ flashback. For the life of me, I could not find the stupid wood! I’ll be honest, even when I managed to find the wood pile outside pretty much by playing “hunt the pixel” looking for hotspots, it still didn’t look like a wood pile. It really did look like a generic, background blob, like a bush or something. I think it was too small and pixelated to show enough detail.
The second puzzle that had me stuck was the Pigeon Brothers Sisters’ wrench. I did everything I needed to do to get the Sisters to the Hotel, but I failed to pick up the wrench right there. There was no motivation for it (I hadn’t entered the Pillow Factory grounds, so there was no need for a wrench), and I thought that that puzzle was solved and completed. I had no reason to think the Pigeon Brothers Sisters were still around the Hotel (although the truck in front sort of hinted to this).
The problem was that after that, I solved so many other puzzles and advanced the story so much, that I had completely lost track of that whole puzzle. So when I finally learned that I needed the wrench, I was absolutely sure that my job was to figure out how to get the Pigeon Brothers Sisters back into the hotel. I had even forgotten in which room they were (why should I have cared? I thought I was done with them).
A week later, having not found a way to summon the Pigeon Brothers Sisters back to the hotel, nor knowing where the heck they could be, I just broke down and decided to go floor by floor and “brute force” a solution by searching for the Sisters in every room.
When I finally managed to figure out what was missing, although the solutions were logical and fair, rather than feeling satisfied, I couldn’t help but feel that the game could have done more to keep me focus on the solution.
Anyway, one other positive thing of all this was that at no point did I have to resort to the old technique of “try everything with everything else,” since all puzzles were logical and fair. I am very happy about that.
-dZ.
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Oh I missed this! What can you use the waste for there?
Hmm… what Quickie Pal easter egg?? 
The only part that took me a while to figure out was charging the battery. I finally went back to the right area thinking perhaps I could get a new battery from the vehicle, I didn’t remember at all the electric fence by that time.
I figured that one almost immediately – as soon as I managed to get the battery out of the truck.
My reasoning went like this:
My Wife: "OK, so we got the battery, now we have to charge it, right?"
Me: "Yes, but where…"
My Wife: "Do we have anything electric in the inventory? How about the microwave?"
Me: "Hmm… that’ll probably be messy and doesn’t sound logical enough."
My Wife: "have we seen a generator anywhere? How about the Radio Tower?"
Me: “Good idea! The tower has a big Arc Lamp on top!!! Let’s go to it…”
{tried and didn’t work…}
My Wife: "Have we seen a generat…"
Me: "I HAVE AN IDEA!!! I think we’ve seen a generator!"
My Wife: "Where???"
Me: “Wait… I’ll show you.”
{tried the electric fence}
Me: {with a huge smug smile on my face} "Ta-Daaa!"
My Wife: “Yay!”
-dZ.
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Cool. I don’t remember what crazy things I must have tried attempting to charge that battery, lol. I was so close to give up and look online, but in the end I resisted the temptation.
The “hardest” puzzle in terms of time spent trying to solve it was for me the book of the dead. I was absolutely convinced I needed to find the title before browsing the library. It took me hours before I said “ah, * beep * it, I’ll just go through the whole library”. Frustrating to find the book there.
My favorite was the CopyTron one. All the steps you need to do to obtain the copy plus the fact that you lack the coin - when I noticed the bottle had a deposit it really felt good.
The puddle was way too easy, in my opinion. EVERY character stepped on it, it was the only hotspot. I was trying to put the ashes from the fireplace and other things that could make the puddle change color. Once I saw the radioactive waste, it was my first thought.
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