A portion of a Gamasutra interview with dev Jenn Sandercock...
GS: Nostalgia is such a critical—some might say overwhelming—theme in so many contemporary indie games. They’re always harkening back to something in gaming’s history and that seems to be the case here at least in the game’s pixel aesthetic, and its classic adventure game style mechanics. How does Thimbleweed Park go beyond that, however? What’s there for people who are looking forward rather than back?
JS: What makes us different to many games that are “inspired by” or “in homage” to classic games is that our core team is made up of people who actually created those classic games. So they know all the things that they learnt previously and have had time to think about ways to fix any issues they perceived in the way they used to make games. Also, I’m sure having fans come up to them over the years saying things like: “I loved X, but that one puzzle was so frustrating” helps a lot.
What I and the others bring to the team is a fresh perspective. I grew up playing adventure games and loved them a lot (it’s why I got into the industry). Based on that experience there were a number of pet peeves that I wanted to “fix”. For example, in Thimbleweed Park at the edge of the screen the cursor changes to show an arrow if there’s another area you can explore at the side of the screen, whether that’s via side scrolling or going to a new room. And that’s because there was one game where I got stuck because I didn’t even realize there was another room I could explore.
Other little things that we’ve included are: dynamic lighting, fast walking, full voice acting, casual mode, a hint-line system, following your cursor around. None of those things seem very big when taken by themselves, but when you put it together it modernizes the game and makes it easy for people to jump in and play regardless of whether they are veteran point-and-click adventure gamers or new to the genre.
from GoNintendo
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