Anyone who likes colorful pixel optics will definitely get their money’s worth in the still unnamed title.
One beautiful evening, the sun was just setting off with a few last warming rays on the horizon, The Legend of Zelda and Diablo met on their walk. They talked, laughed together, got along well. A few dates and a very romantic vacation on Monkey Island later, the time had come: her child was born.
That’s exactly how (well, sort of) the story behind Ron Gilbert’s new action role-playing game must have been. Because the Monkey Island inventor himself draws this comparison: We should be looking at a mix of Nintendo’s popular Hyrule saga and Blizzard’s legendary monster hunt.
Das Gameplay: nebulös
Now we would like to enrich this ambitious-sounding description of the game with all sorts of information about gameplay, plot and other features. The problem is: there are hardly any.
Ron Gilbert himself posts on his Mastodon-Account although there are regularly new tidbits about his project. But the title doesn’t have a name yet, nor do we know any more details about the actual gameplay.
Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park
it says on the Gilberts Studio website Terrible Toybox. A look at the screenshots initially makes us think of Stardew Valley. The colorful pixel look will definitely appeal to retro fans.
From diligent (and very entertaining) reading of his Mastodon timeline, we gained some insights:
- There will be different quest givers at the start. (Those)
- According to Ron Gilbert, even the simplest quest requires an entire working day to implement. (Those)
- You will be able to throw bombs. (Those)
- Almost all NPCs in the game will be able to die. Only a few characters who are fundamental to the main story are saved from this fate. (Those)
- The enemy type will be skeletons, which you will fight in a crypt (Those)
- There will be a day-night cycle, as the screenshots above tell us.
- Apparently there will be a town hall in the game, where both justice and bureaucracy can be found and we can increase our bureaucracy attribute. As you know, with Ron Gilbert you never know whether this is a joke or not. (Those)
- The capital in the game will also house at least one bakery and a weapon shop so that you can optimally prepare for your adventures. (Those)
By the way: One of Ron Gilbert’s last projects was the classic point & click adventure Thimbleweed Park, which we of course also took a close look at at the time:
4:30
Thimbleweed Park – pure nostalgia or just old-school transfiguration?
The release: unclear
When is this coming out now?
, you might ask. But here too we can unfortunately only shrug our shoulders. The problem: According to Ron Gilbert, he has only been working on the game since the beginning of the year and his only information about the release date reads as follows:
Coming late 2024 (or maybe early 2025, this is gamedev after all)
So you see: somehow everything is possible here. In the meantime, the project has at least received an increase in personnel. Because Elissa Black, who created the sci-fi retro game together with her studio Flat Earth Games Objects in Space published, will be involved in the project as a quest designer in the future.
Ron Gilbert says about this: [Elissas Mitwirken] increases the chance by 37 percent that I’ll finish the game before I get bored and disillusioned.
If you are more interested in games that are definitely coming out or have already been released, we have a few really good browsing tips for you. Our Steam explorer Christian has picked out five new games for you that unfortunately remain under the radar and are therefore often overlooked.
Epic is also giving away the excellent Dragon Age: Inquisition just because. And what about Starfield? We shot Tillmann into space with a rocket and told him to do some investigative work to see what the new mega patch had brought.
