Less interactions inside of the pillow factory?

Me personally, I didn´t have a problem with that. I think the rooms added atmosphere and depth and I made me feel like there was something even bigger ahead. So thanks for not adding a distracting “Pepsi Vending Machine”.

1 Like

Despite my comments above, I agree with @milanfahrnholz that those screens weren’t exactly disadvantageous. They were nice pixel-art and made the factory feel bigger and more complex. If you had cut them, the remains would probably have made the factory feel a bit too small. The abdication of hot-spots is consistent with the non-giveable NPCs and prevents the player from getting distracted indeed. Seeing that some puzzles were cut, I understand why the room screens are how they are, and, I think you made the right decision.
Nonetheless, hot-spots usually help to enhance that world, and, in my opinion, they often increase the replay value of such a game. If a hot-spot is not important for the gameplay, the character can suggest this fact. But, I admit that there are enough other hot-spots in the game, e.g. Delores’s room.

Why?

When I entered the factory I thought: “Here comes the last quarter of the story. In the factory are the hard(est) puzzles. I have to take a vacation to solve them. The story gets very interesting. There are many secrets in the factory to explore. It’s getting beeping exciting!” But that was not the case. With the cut scene you set up a high level of suspense. That suspense collapsed with the empty rooms and the pace.

It’s like Luke enters the death star, walks down a long empty hallway for several minutes, opens a door and finds his father.

Disclaimer: These were my own personal impressions!

1 Like

I think the double click should take you straight to the next room instead of making you walk (even if it is walking faster) the whole room. There is nothing more desperate than knowing (or thinking you know) the solution to a puzzle and having to waste time wandering around to get to your destination. The first time you visit new rooms and spots you waste a lot of time investigating (at least that’s my case) and wandering around, but once you are solving a puzzle and inspiration has come, you (at least me) want to get there as fast as possible to solve it or realize you were wrong. At that point rooms have already been inspected and what I want is try to test a puzzle solution.

That’s how I felt too, I was expecting one or two very hard puzzles in the factory and I was somewhat disappointed that they were fairly easy. You could argue that getting the tin foil was a pretty hard one, but since I got it before opening the factory doors I didn’t feel it. In the end I think that’s a byproduct of not having puzzles to be solved at a specific points. For example, if the pizza guy was inside the factory, then it would have made the sekrit location puzzle part of “the factory”.

1 Like

We already got the map which allows us leaving areas quickly, but otherwise:
DENIED!

  1. 2015: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/18minutes#5679f0118195c3c54e251ad4
  2. 2016: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/ui_changes#57cb35e97dce7c7733c9f8b6
  3. 2017: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/options_options#58dfceae7dce7cdd2f58a93b

The map is useless to cross the cemetery or go from one side of A street to the other.

The only link regarding my comment is the third one in which Ron express his opinion, which I don’t share.

Having an option to skip fast to the next room is (as the name implies) an option. You can use it or wander around as much as you want, I think is better to have more options so that people can choose which is the one that fits their needs.

I don’t see the benefit of being able to choose toilet paper and not being able to choose how fast I want to move across a room without having to see the character moving through the room. For instance to cross from :delores: room to Chuck’s is funny if you use the door and a bit faster than walking to it. But after you’ve crossed it 40 times you don’t need to go through that again and it becomes more a problem than a joy.

Even though Mr Gilbert is my hero, he is not my God, I completely agree with him and his old post on what makes good adventure games, on the other hand I disagree on UI since I rather prefer to have the whole screen for the art and story and have some UI like the one in Sam’n’Max I also disagree on how fast you can cross a room.

If you have paid attention to the development blog I’m sure you are aware that the verbs and inventory zone have changed, it is now transparent allowing you to see a bit more of the room. Why make that change if the old one was OK? Why changing the verb fonts to more attractive ones and give you the option to use the “classic” ones? Because more options allow people to customize the game the way they like it.

You only have to traverse the cemetery once and after having the map you can directly go there.
To go from one side of A street to the other your only option is to use run, it’s better than nothing (btw. for B Street you can go to the bus stop).

The only reason he added those options was to not to alienate the backers which may have been already fallen in love with the old style.
If he would have developed the game with a normal publisher and without this public blog he would have just changed the font and the verbs and that’s it (well, except the publisher has another idea…).

Having a lot of options is not really fun when developing and especially testing software.

Link 1: Ron Gilbert:

The game isn’t a UI. It’s a world to explore and travel around. If players should just teleport around, there is no chance to reward them with surprise. You get things for wondering around, looking and paying attention.

Link 2: Ron Gilbert:

Teleportation destroys a players sense of the world. I played an adventure game recently that allowed you to teleport around the game and I had no idea where I was. I had no mental map of the world. For me, the most important character in an adventure game is the world and you have to spend time letting the player get to know your main character. Players need a sense of space.

In Thimbleweed Park, you can double-click to run, but, for a first few hours of the game, you will need to walk around the world, getting to know it. Then you solve a puzzle that allows some limited ability to teleport around the world, but it’s all in the context of the story and world. It’s not magical teleportation.

Because it comes later in the game, after players have built a mental map of the world, it feel OK and it’s a great moment. It’s also something players have to “discover” so that is also a great feeling.

Link 3: Ron Gilbert:

They started doing that in MI3, in MI2 double click didn’t do an immediate room exit. I did fast walking as a concession. I really object to teleporting around games unless is in the fiction.

3 Likes

No, that was in the first version I played (the one with the rat hole bug), the other ones I had made me cross the whole cemetery every time I wanted to go there.[quote=“Nor_Treblig, post:48, topic:334”]
The only reason he added those options was to not to alienate the backers which may have been already fallen in love with the old style.
If he would have developed the game with a normal publisher and without this public blog he would have just changed the font and the verbs and that’s it (well, except the publisher has another idea…).
[/quote]

If I’m not mistaken I think the first option was the classic fonts, they were changed to more aesthetic ones later.

I never talked about teleporting, the guy that asked in the blog wanted to teleport characters to meet them faster.

The same goes to the second link. I’m not talking about teleporting between rooms I’m talking about skipping the travel IN that room.

Is this a bug? I can click on cemetery on the map to get directly to the tomb.

You are talking about double-clicking to immediately exit the room / enter the next room.
i.e. you are talking about teleporting!

With such option you could zip through all kind of rooms to get from one end of the game world to the other. It’s completely breaking the immersion of having an actual world.
Even on the map (which is meant to remove the need of some other kind of teleportation) the character will actually walk (or run) to the desired location.

Once you’ve walked to the tomb once, you can click on the cemetery and it takes you directly to the tomb. It has been this way since the launch and it was never a bug.

3 Likes

That means you didn’t follow the blog. It was clearly stated that the game was, interaction-wise, complete and playable on the temp-art before the art was complete. And voice acting was the very last thing - how can you think of beginning voice recording if you didn’t implement a puzzle and you then don’t know which lines the actors are going to say?

I wasn’t stating a strict chronology. I was just saying that I could totally imagine the team cutting puzzles and interactions from the final scenes for many reasons, including running out of time to get it polished the way they wanted it. Including, as I said, the final artwork being ready before the full rooms were implemented. Even Mr. Gilbert stated comments to this effect in his blog.

Who cares which came first, the chicken or the egg, if at the end of the day the customer feels like the omelette needs salt? It’s the perception of the final product that matters, which was my my point.

-dZ.

Ok, I understand what you mean, but still your idea that it has been rushed for lack of time is not supported by the facts.

The game isn’t developed in a chronological fashion. It doesn’t get developed along as you play it, so lack of time would have been noticed everywhere instead of just the ending.

And, it’s not “I wanted more salt on my omelette”, you’re saying “hey chef, you totally forgot to add salt”, while the chef already told a lot of times “I did”. You wanted more salt, and it’s OK, it’s your right to ask for more… but there’s a fine line between an opinion (“the ending looks rushed”) and stating a fact (“the ending is rushed because they run out of time and money and cut it”)

I don’t know if it was “rushed” for lack of time. I said that it feels that way. And considering that Mr. Gilbert has made allusions at having to make some tough decisions in cutting things in order to stay on track, on budget, or to improve the pace and story; it sort of makes sense that some things were left off in the interest of pacing and or expediency.

Trade-offs are a natural part of any project, and Thimbleweed Park is not immune to them.

Nothing of the sort. Let’s see:

Tell me again where I was stating fact and not opinion? :confused:

Mr. Gilbert, I think you must understand that differences of opinion does not mean that one of us is wrong. As you yourself have said in the past, this is what makes this world of ours so interesting. :wink:

I completely appreciate and understand the reasons why it was done and the trade-offs at play, and they are absolutely reasonable. I also thank you for being so transparent with us in sharing so much detail.

As an actual player (and not a hard-core adventure gamer at all, just a simple dabbler), I still disagree that the finished product achieved what you wanted without any loss; and it seems, I’m not alone.

That’s it. This is not a challenge to you or your decisions. It’s expressing my opinion, for whatever that is worth. I probably couldn’t have done any better since I am not an adventure game designer, but such is life. Thimbleweed Park is just so close to greatness.

The overall experience of the game was very good, even if the ending felt a bit anti-climactic to me. :slight_smile:

dZ.

The moment you say the reasons why.

I have nothing against “it feels rushed”. As soon as you say “because they were running out of time”, you’re stating a fact without any proof (moreover - a fact that has been twice confuted by the game author).

Then I apologize, it seems to be a misunderstanding. I thought I stated “it feels rushed as if…” not “because…”

dZ.

I could also have been wrong in the interpretation :stuck_out_tongue: no need to apologize! Anyway, I also would have liked something more to do in the factory… but I noticed there’s nothing to do only on my second run. In my first run I was so eager for an ending that I just took a look at what was happening, saw, there were no hotspots and went over. I never stopped to think “hey, why can’t I do anything here?”. Only when replaying it I noticed the oddity.

:slight_smile:

I guess my problem was also that it took me over 30 hours to complete the game, and almost 3 whole weeks in real life time. After weeks of struggling through at least a couple of hard-stuck puzzles, when I sat down with my wife one night and entered the Pillow Factory, the game just ended in what felt like no time at all.

I was so eager to enter the Pillow Factory, there was such build up throughout the game, and it just went through almost perfunctory, clicking here and there without much thought, in a very linear way.

I guess if you treat the game as a movie where all plot and dramatic cues happen at precisely the right time, the end-game needs to be tight enough to delivery the right punch. However, as I was playing for the very first time with no hints or walkthroughs, it felt like I was immersed in this world for a long time, and then the end-game came and went in a blink of an eye.

I’ll have to play it again and see if keeping a brisker pace throughout the rest of the game (no reasons to get stuck again this time around!) changes that perception. :slight_smile:

-dZ.

1 Like