In Larry, when you went to the dark alleys and were attacked by someone, the game restarted with no way back.
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That’s really a pity, because I bet that I would have enjoyed the stories of some Sierra games, had the gameplay being less “punitive”. 
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Then you may consider playing:
Eco Quest 1 and 2 (no deadends and no deaths). Suprisingly hard puzzles, but fair. A couple of hard to find hotspots. Amazing art. Eco quest 2 is better, start there.
Robin Hood: conquest of the Longbow. There are a couple of deadends, but you only need to go back 5 minutes via savegames. You don’t replay the whole game. I’m replaying this and it’s awesome. There are a couple of unfair puzzles of the kind “you need to go to a location adjacent to this location and something will happen” or “you need to go to this location and wait 15 seconds and something will happen”.
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Thanks for the suggestions. 
I don’t play many adventure games, nowadays, but I’ll add Eco Quest 2 to my wishlist!
I’m having trouble not imagining that as a game where if you take the wrong turn you die in toxic sludge.
Surprisingly it’s not like that.
The only problem is the story is a bit childish
After witnessing undignified human behaviors in other social venues discussing RtMI, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge how pleasant this community is.
We express our thoughts freely, including negative opinions about something, without transcending into insults, personal attacks, aggressive ideological crusades and other unpleasant phenomena.
This result shouldn’t be taken for granted. Social media is a giant echo chamber where people’s behavior and voices can be easily amplified and distorted. It’s nice to have a place where even controversial topics are discussed with dignity and in a playful way.
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This is the best community and forum I have ever been a part of 
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Dominic Armato has excruciatingly tortured my curiosity, in his interview. 
He was impressed by the mechanic used to link the game with MI2 which, smiling, he said was “very clever”.
He also mentioned more than one time some kind of “depth”. He said that, to him, RtMI feels like the old games. It’s a fun, goofy game on the surface but there are also “some deep currents in this one”.
When asked for a single non-spoilery word to describe the game he really struggled to find something. “Home” came to his mind, though.
I don’t know what to think about it, but I really hope that the references to the “deep currents” mean that the story will match with some serious tones that, personally, I perceived in MI1 and MI2.
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YouTube auto generated subtitles for a section of the interview:
Cressup: I had a chat with Noah Falstein as well and he was saying about how he feels like people are going to be writing thesis on this game, because it’s got so many different layers and a lot going on and I was just interested what was your reaction when you first read the script.
Dominic Armato: I know that I’m not someone who can come at this from an objective standpoint, but I think it is so smart and so clever how they’ve approached this one and and I love, you know, I can’t give away any specifics obviously, but they’ve worked in some some really poignant themes and done it in such a beautiful way. I just feel like there’s a lot there’s a lot of depth to this one. On the surface, it’s still what I know and enjoy and even more so in some ways. To me, it’s the return, right? To me, it feels like the old one sort of that. Of course there are dumb punch lines of course, but the humor feels so natural and so effortless and on the surface it’s that sort of that fun, a little goofy, a little irreverent, but there are some deep currents with this one and I don’t wanna give it away. There’s a lot of beauty in this script. I like it. I like it a lot. I’m really impressed by how they’ve handled it. Both how they’ve handled the mechanics of the transition of, you know, trying to pick up where [Monkey Island] 2 left off which is very clever. I’m not gonna tell you sorry and also how they’ve carried through some themes and turned them into something very deep and interesting. I’m so sorry. This is so vague.
Cressup: It’s fine. I’m just trying to, as much as I can, just pick little bits out from you.
Dominic Armato: I can’t wait for people to actually play it, because I really think it’s fantastic how they’ve approached this and how they’ve done it.
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From the AI chat thread:
I know it’s just a little chat from a developing A.I., but… I really feel like it’s misguessing the nature and context of the whole art style discussion. I get a sense that 99% or so of the people complaining about the art style (including me) are going to buy and love Return to Monkey Island regardless.
In terms of sales, I don’t expect the art style to have much impact on the bottom line. I expect the same niche adventure game buyers will show up as did for Thimbleweed Park. Maybe slightly more because of the MI brand reputation in adventure game communities… but also maybe slightly less, because this trailer slammed us with a slew of side characters that people unfamiliar with the MI franchise won’t recognize. It makes me think of Thimbleweed complaints about the in-jokes, from newcomers who hadn’t grown up on Lucas games.
If this game does a lot better than expected, or a lot worse than expected? Either way, I think it would be a mistake to pin it on the art style.
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Why? I think that making this assumption is very wise, but my emotional side can’t help but wonder why a backlash that has split the community in half (I’m thinking of the Reddit poll) couldn’t have a serious impact on sales.
Many undecided people might be influenced by a large amount of negative reviews in online stores like Steam, for example. To be clear, I’m not assuming that the negative reviews will be high, I’m just asking why do you think that this amount of negativity couldn’t have a big impact on sales.
But we don’t know if that result would be economically acceptable or a disaster. In my opinion we should consider that for this new project there is more than one subject that needs to be compensated (Terrible Toybox, Devolver Digital, Disney).
Also, the budget for RtMI is higher that the budget for TWP, so I get the impression that they need to make more money than what they made with the previous project…
…which explains why RtMI will have a higher price than TWP’s. And higher prices lead to less sales, usually.
Oh don’t worry, they won’t be recognized by MI super-experts either. 
Jokes apart, I’m sure that I’m missing something in this point, that you made also in the art style thread. Why characters that are not recognized by people would be a negative thing for them? Wouldn’t their presence in the trailer have a neutral effect on those who don’t recognize them?
Well, you mentioned reddit polls. We all LOVE how official and accurate the reddit polls are ;), so I’ll ask if you’ve seen this one: Reddit - Dive into anything
The poll asks if you plan to preorder the game. Now, skim the comments and you’ll see that the poll has issues with its premise. A lot of people in those comments are ideologically opposed to preordering any game at all! They plan to buy the game on Day One, but they hate this poll because it’s geared toward preorders specifically. The poll is biased to making MI6 reception look worse than it will actually be in this community.
With that in mind, look at the numbers. An OVERWHELMING majority answered that yes they plan to preorder the game. This is the same community that had the other polls, where the same people are split into thirds over liking, hating, or being neutral to the art.
We are Monkey Island fans. If a portion of us don’t like something very specific? We’re probably going to buy it anyway, suck on the parts that we love, and complain about the parts we don’t. We aren’t going to “vote with our wallets”, not if we got attached to this franchise 30 years ago already.
Well, I’m pulling from two personal anecdotes (Telltale Sam and Max, Telltale King’s Quest) and one nonpersonal feedback to Thimbleweed Park.
Personal Anecdote #1: The mid 2000s had me leave PC gaming behind and turn to consoles. So I missed Sam and Max Save the World. Later, I see Sam and Max Seasons 2 and 3 available on PS3. As a lowkey fan of Hit the Road, I tried the demos. I was narratively lost. There were all kinds of characters and references that I knew must have happened in previous seasons (e.g. Why is Sam referring to Max as the president?). I eventually bought Seasons 2 and 3 when they said PS3 games wouldn’t be on the online PS store anymore, and I was afraid access would disappear like Wiiware. Present day: after watching a playthrough of Season 1 on Youtube, I’m finally going through the rest.
Personal Anecdote #2: Telltale King’s Quest intrigued me because I’d played a good bit of Telltale (pre and post Walking Dead) by the time I heard of it, and King’s Quest was a franchise I had always heard about and seen on shelves growing up. But, again, it was daunting to jump into a franchise so many games deep, decades old, without knowing anything about it. Eventually, I had a gift card and caught it on a $5 sale, so I do currently own it. I started to play it, several months ago. But I stalled because I sort of want the full story. I’m not sure if I’m going to give it another try before watching playthroughs of everything on Youtube, and that might honestly take me a few years. I would never have bought this game at full price, or with my own money; it’s too far down a road that I haven’t walked.
Nonpersonal Anecdote: I wasn’t around here when Thimbleweed Park first came out, but I’ve read some old threads here and elsewhere. Do you remember people complaining about the vast amount of in-jokes, to the degree that Ron added an option to turn them off? I remember one particular post… this person had not grown up with Lucas games, and it was off-putting for him every time he heard a comment that felt like a reference to something he didn’t know. It was like a series of inside jokes that he wasn’t privy too, and that worsened his experience.
When I read posts like that, I think of my own anecdotes and other times I’ve been too intimidated to step into a franchise already matured without me. If I knew nothing about Monkey Island, and I watched the new trailer for Return? I’d probably also see comments or response videos of people excited to see Stan! Wally! Otis! Carla! The cook! Cobb the Loom guy! The Lookout! Morgan in the doodles! And hey guys, is this happening after MI2 or MI5? Hey guys, do you think Guybrush and Elaine are still married? Hey guys, they say it’s going to start when he’s still a kid at the amusement park! But guys, maybe he’s going to time travel? Hey guys, Ron posted a Star Trek time gate reference connected to the archway at the start of Secret! We’re going to find out the secret of Monkey Island after 30 years! So much hype about this game is centered on answering questions that have existed for decades. The game has “Return” in it title - its appeal is as a throwback game, regardless of the creator’s intent.
As a longtime fan, this is pure hype for me. But if I had never played a Monkey Island game in my life, this is 100% NOT the first game I would try. And guess which franchise had zero representation on the Nintendo Switch so far, and which games have been pulled from the Playstation Store?
Not everybody is like me. But for the people who are like me? For people who are like me, I’m not getting pulled into a new franchise six games deep… and conversely, I’m not going to miss out on a franchise that’s been with me for six games already.
This is why I don’t think art style is going to be a key factor in sales numbers, despite being the most controversial topic among fans who are probably going to buy the game regardless.
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Interesting that he says they tried to pick up where MI2 left off.
He could have simply said “it’s impressive how they managed to pick up where MI2 left off, they had quite a clever gimmick”.
Instead he said “they tried to pick up”…
to me this suggest they shrugged off the MI2 ending in a quick (but clever) way.
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Also when asked about how he handled Guybrush’s aging, he laughed it off by saying the aging took care of itself.
That leads me to believe we’ll be seeing stuff after MI5. (Hopefully.)
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It’s at 1:58. I am trying to understand in context what he meant…
I interpreted it to mean: This character is older than before, so how do you handle his voice getting older?
I interpreted Dominic’s answer to mean that he himself has aged comparable to Guybrush, so his voice acting is going to produce an older voice by default.
Which leans heavier on “Monkey Island 6”, and less on “Monkey Island 3a”.
I know, but… 1) visually Guybrush doesn’t seem aged; 2) the context doesn’t support that, especially the long discourse he started about how it’s not the voice but the tone that matters; 3) if true, it would be the mother of all leaks . (Well, maybe not)
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His nose does.
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The old jingle revamped:
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