Renowned game developer Ron Gilbert’s latest game is not at all what any of us might’ve expected. As spotted by Time Extension, the game’s been teased as “Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park,” and is set to release in 2024…maybe.
Gilbert, famed for his tenure at LucasArts where he developed legendary adventure games like Maniac Mansion and the Monkey Island series, began work on the title earlier this year, and has been teasing out its development on his Mastodon account. We know little else about the game at this moment, but as of a few days ago, Gilbert formally unveiled the game and revealed that Elissa Black (who co-founded Flat Earth Games, makers of Objects in Space) would be joining the team as a quest designer. Gilbert joked that her addition to the team “ups the chance by 37% that I’ll finish the game before becoming bored and disillusioned.”
The post also features a screenshot of the in-development RPG, which boasts a cozy but familiar pixel-art style. The few sprites featured in the image don’t look too different from characters featured in some of Gilbert’s other games, especially Thimbleweed Park.
Since leaving LucasArts, Gilbert has remained active in the games industry, joining forces with TIm Schafer at Double Fine Entertainment in the early 2010s to develop the adventure game The Cave, before eventually leaving and founding his own studio, Terrible Toybox, where he worked on the throwback point-and-click Thimbleweed Park. Yes, the very same Thimbleweed Park that is inspiring Gilbert’s latest game. More of us should take inspiration from ourselves. Fuck yeah, Ron.
Since Thimbleweed Park’s release in 2017, Gilbert and his studio also sneakily worked on and released 2022’s acclaimed Return to Monkey Island. The game marked Gilbert’s first contribution to the series he created since Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge in 1991.
Though Gilbert seems to believe that he and the team at Terrible Toybox could launch the game later this year, the listing on the company’s website does throw in a parenthetical that jokes, “maybe early 2025, this is gamedev after all.” No matter what, it sounds like we’re getting a new Ron Gilbert game relatively soon, folks!
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