Ciao Luca,
I recently thought it was a clever way to represent how the preoccupation for murders and killers is often just politically driven by those who have the power (see Chuck and his âpuppetâ the sheriffâŚ) so the real problem is not that thereâs is a killer-reno on the loose, but the nature of our actions, and the freedom we could gain just thinking about our actual freedom. Thimbleweed Park is a game that thickles you more on the etic side, than on the emic one, Emic and etic - Wikipedia, it works more on the cerebral side, than on the emotional identification and direct aestetics and enviroenmental evocation. Probably it sacrifices a little too much the second one for the first one, but what it gets in terms of significance in the end makes the result really worth the try.
Probably the passage from the story within the story to the meta-story happens when the story isnât very well established into the player yet, since the better you build an emotional bond with the user (reader, player, spectator) the better you can shift the story to its meta twist. Anyway the overall result is very good and stalwart. A better emotional adhesion in the first part (the world appears too early as limited and false as the further evolution of the story requires) would have even increased the overall good result, better satisfying all the audiences and multiple levels of expression. But also probably not, I donât have enough experience to tell. What I know is that the game succeeds in accomplishing its final goal, to stimulate reflection through intrerpretation for other things that are not the game itself and belong to our world and our experience of it. WATE (what a terrible English, as usual).