Return to Monkey Island

Return to Monkey Island is a 2D point-and-click adventure game. The objective is to move the story forward by solving narrative-based puzzles. This can be done by exploring locations, talking to non-player characters to acquire information, collecting items and using them at the right time. The player controls the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who sails the seas and visits islands. The user interface is different from previous 2D Monkey Island games. Tooltips over screen hotspots guide the player's actions: when the cursor is moved over an interactive zone of the scene, a brief phrase appears, suggesting what action Guybrush will take. and the interface has been designed to work with controllers or mouses. The game includes a hint system designed to discourage players from looking for walkthroughs online and make sense "in the fantasy" of the game. The game also includes a simplified mode called "casual mode" for less experienced players. ==Synopsis==

Setting and characters Return to Monkey Island takes place on fictional islands in the Caribbean around the Golden Age of Piracy, as with previous games of the franchise. and follows Guybrush's journey to finally find the secret of Monkey Island. Along the way, Guybrush revisits iconic locations from the series, such as Mêlée Island (which is now under new management) and Monkey Island. Other returning characters include Murray the Demonic Talking Skull (Denny Delk), mapmaker Wally B. Feed (Neil Ross), used ship salesman Stan S. Stanman (Gavin Hammon), Mêlée governor and former swordmaster Carla (Leilani Jones Wilmore), and the mysterious Corina the Voodoo Lady (Wilmore). New characters include Captains Madison (Alix Wilton Regan), Lila (Annie Q.), and Trent (LeQuan Bennett), the three new Pirate Leaders competing with Guybrush and LeChuck to find the secret. Plot Guybrush and Elaine's son Boybrush (Ava Hauser) is playing with his friend Chuckie (Courtenay Taylor) at an amusement park, re-enacting his father's adventures. At Boybrush's prompting, Guybrush decides to tell him the story of how he found the secret of Monkey Island. Having learned that LeChuck has obtained a map to the exact location of the secret, Guybrush travels to Mêlée Island in an attempt to gather a crew and ship to get there first, but the new Pirate Leaders Madison, Lila, and Trent refuse to back his venture. With his options limited, Guybrush obtains a magical eyepatch that disguises him as a zombie, allowing him to infiltrate LeChuck's crew before they shove off. Along the way, the potion used to guide the ship to Monkey Island is ruined, but Guybrush discovers the Pirate Leaders are also heading for Monkey Island and secretly completes their potion so LeChuck's ship can follow them. As they approach the Island, Guybrush takes LeChuck's map and replaces it with a fake, but accidentally removes his eyepatch and LeChuck throws Guybrush overboard. After washing up on Monkey Island, Guybrush follows the map but falls into a trap by the Pirate Leaders, who had intended it for LeChuck. As they have the real map but it is magically-encrypted, they agree to a truce to find the secret's location. With Guybrush's help, the map reveals the secret to be at the International House of Mojo on Mêlée Island. The Pirate Leaders betray Guybrush and throw him off a cliff before setting sail; LeChuck, realizing the deception, pursues them. Elaine arrives to help Guybrush, and they escape the island by rebuilding his old ship, the Sea Monkey. While at sea, LeChuck battles the Pirate Leaders before eventually agreeing to a truce to find the secret. Arriving at the International House of Mojo, Guybrush learns the secret is hidden inside a safe locked by five golden keys, which have been scattered. Following a series of clues, Guybrush travels the Caribbean to find each of the keys, frequently leaving a trail of destruction in his wake due to his single-minded obsession with the secret. In his absence, LeChuck and the Pirate Leaders attempt to use magic to open the safe instead, but they eventually turn on one another and LeChuck kills the Pirate Leaders. After obtaining the last key, Guybrush opens the safe, only to find a locked chest. LeChuck appears and steals the chest, taking it back to Monkey Island to perform the necessary ritual to open it and obtain the secret. Guybrush and Elaine follow, though Elaine repeatedly questions if the secret could live up to his expectations. Descending beneath Monkey Island, Guybrush follows the catacombs and opens a hidden door. He emerges in a theme park recreation of Melee Island, revealing it to be the true setting of all his adventures, with LeChuck and the others all being animatronics. Guybrush can open the chest containing the secret and find a novelty T-shirt inside. Boybrush finds this ending unsatisfying and questions its veracity, but Guybrush remains ambiguous in his answers. Elaine arrives and invites Guybrush to join her on a new adventure. The game offers multiple different post-credits scenes depending on the player's choices in the final sequence. ==Development==

Origin and production returned after 31 years to finish his vision of the overarching story after the events of Monkey Island 2. Ron Gilbert, the creator of the Monkey Island series, worked on the first two Monkey Island games before leaving the development company, LucasArts, in 1992. He often dreamt of making a new Monkey Island game but did not own the intellectual property rights. Further Monkey Island games were developed without Gilbert by LucasArts and Telltale Games. In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired the rights to Monkey Island when it purchased Lucasfilm. At PAX 2019, Nigel Lowrie, founder of Devolver Digital, mentioned to Gilbert that he knew John Drake, who was in charge of licensing at Disney. Drake wanted to approach Disney about a new Monkey Island game. to discuss ideas, and felt confident that they could create a good game. Gilbert said that they had a lot more freedom and flexibility to not make it a pixel art game. Crowle, who had played The Secret of Monkey Island as a child, took inspiration from other Monkey Island games, as well as other 1990s LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle. For Return to Monkey Island, he defined a style reminiscent of a picture book or a pop-up book because it matched well with the main topics of the game: "We've taken something from all of the games, while making something new and specifically tailored to the story that Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman wanted to tell. An art style has to connect with the core themes of the game you're making, its not an interchangeable thing that you apply like a Photoshop filter, and for this adventure a picture-book style was the right fit". Music and voice acting Composers Michael Land, Peter McConnell, and Clint Bajakian, who already worked on previous installments of the Monkey Island franchise, were hired to compose the game soundtrack. and was happy to accept the offer. Gilbert met with Armato to have a chat about an unspecified "new game" and the voice actor was baffled when he discovered that the game in question was a Monkey Island game: "We got together, we had coffee, and I think he was very interested in the new game, almost kind of wondering whether maybe he could have a voice part in it. And then I told him that it was the new Monkey Island, and he was just floored". Technical design The team spent time making Return to Monkey Island enjoyable with a controller without making the experience worse for players who use a mouse, which point-and-click adventure games typically use. One of the goals was "not distracting or detracting from what the mouse play is". On April 4, Devolver Digital published a teaser video on their YouTube channel and opened the official website. The website was updated in June to show an example of the game's dialogue-based gameplay. Visitors could ask Stan, a regular character in the series, about the new game. The game was advertised on the official website as "the exciting conclusion of the Monkey Island series", which led to speculation as to whether it would be the final chapter in the series. This was refuted when the developers described it as marketing text not written by them. Starting from July 11, Gilbert and Grossman shared on Twitter a video clip of the game every Monday, calling the initiative "Monkey Island Monday". The clips revealed new locations, new characters and how the dialogue system and part of the user interface looked like. The game was released for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows on September 19, 2022, which coincided with International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Preorders were opened on Steam and Nintendo eShop. As a pre-order bonus, players would get an in-game horse armor item that stays in their inventory and has no function, a humorous reference to a controversial downloadable content (DLC) for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The game was later released for Linux on October 26, 2022, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 8, 2022, and for iOS and Android on July 27, 2023. ==Reception==

Pre-release In May 2022, after the first teaser video and a few screenshots of Return to Monkey Island were released, the art style drew criticism from fans online. Gilbert wrote a post on his blog explaining why the style was chosen and expressing his disappointment in the response. A gameplay trailer was released on June 28 as part of a Nintendo Direct event. This reignited the backlash, leading some people to insult and harass Gilbert on social media and his blog. As a result, Gilbert disabled comments in the blog and said that he would not talk further about Return to Monkey Island. Several developers publicly criticized the user behavior and supported Gilbert and his team, including Cory Barlog of Santa Monica Studio and Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog. Critical response {{Video game reviews Return to Monkey Island received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The website Pixel Bandits' review of the title lauded the game's commitment to the series, saying that "Return really captures the spirit of the original games and delivers an outstanding 21st century point and click adventure". Rock, Paper, Shotgun described the visuals as "vibrant and lovely, capturing the spirit of the earlier games but in a storybook style that is extremely fitting for this new adventure". Polygon said: "The downright ugly polygonal visuals of Escape and Tales of Monkey Island have been replaced with a sort of Henry Selick aesthetic, like a living map populated by hinged paper dolls". Some reviewers acknowledged the game had a reduced difficulty level but was well paced. The drop of the nine-verb interaction grid, and instead going with the drag-and-drop system, limited some opportunities for comedy, but contributed to a seamless gameplay experience. Sales GameSensor noted that the initial month after the launch of the game on Steam saw Return to Monkey Island achieve sales figures of approximately $3 million. During this same period, the sales volumes of Return reached close to 100,000 units. Comparing the game's release to a previous game developed by Terrible Toybox, Thimbleweed Park, revealed that Return's revenue within its first month surpassed Thimbleweed Park's sales during a similar timeframe by almost sixfold; while the number of copies sold for Return exceeded that of the developer's previous game threefold. The remarkable sales performance of Return has established it as the fastest-selling game within the series. Accolades ==Notes==