Return to Monkey Island Creators Discuss Puzzle Design for the Modern Age

ign.com:

That Return to Monkey Island is happening at all is a game industry modern miracle unto itself. In the three decades since Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman last made a Monkey Island game together, the point-and-click adventure game genre has soared, been left for dead, and eventually been resurrected. When Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge was busy stumping players with “monkey wrench” puzzles, hint lines were still an actual thing, because online wikis, walkthroughs, and hint guides were still in their infancy, along with the Internet itself. I spoke with Gilbert and Grossman ahead of Return to Monkey Island’s release next week to discuss how puzzle making has – and hasn’t – changed since the duo last left wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood.

“There was a different sensibility for puzzles back then,” Gilbert said. “We were new and puzzles were new and adventure games were new. I don’t think the rules had really been established. [And] the audience was quite different back then.” And so, when designing 2022’s Return to Monkey Island, the two designers’ approach has evolved right along with the audience they’re creating the game for. “You still want to have fun, challenging, rewarding puzzles, but I think people have no tolerance for frustration anymore,” Gilbert began. “I think people have so much pulling on them, media-wise, from television shows to movies to games. When the original Monkey Island came out, there were probably ten games or five games that were released at the same time. Now there are 500. They want to play, [but] they don’t want any frustration.”

And so, Gilbert continued, “you still want to give them a challenging experience. You don’t want to give them an experience where they just click through the