2017’s Thimbleweed Park is the kind of game that is rarely made today. Hell, it was the kind of game that was rarely made a decade ago. But Monkey Island creator and legendary game developer Ron Gilbert’s point-and-click adventure game was a hit and now, a decade later, he’s making a sequel, but without crowdfunding or a publisher. Instead, he has a new, simpler solution: he got a rich man to cover the budget.
As explained in a new interview with Bloomberg, Gilbert, who has been making games for about 40 years, said that while he hasn’t always had bad experiences with publishers, the terms of most deals haven’t been good, and in recent years they’ve only gotten worse.
“I don’t care if the publisher gets their money back,” Gilbert told Bloomberg. “It’s just that once they’ve gotten their money back and they’re whole, they still want most of the money. Or there are really ridiculous terms, like you don’t win anything unless it’s a huge hit. I always felt like that was unfair.”
After a long career at LucasArts, helping to create iconic games like Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, Gilbert left and began creating his own games through a few different companies. In 2014, he and his current studio, Terrible Toybox, raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter and developed Thimbleweed Park. It was a retro-inspired point-and-click adventure game, and when it was released in 2017, fans and critics loved it. The game has reportedly sold over 300,000 copies.
In recent years, Gilbert has felt the need to make a sequel. But to make a game you need money. Gilbert decided not to use Kickstarter again, saying in a blog post in January that publishers were interested, but none of the deals they were offering were great. That’s when a friend reached out and said he knew a rich person outside of the games industry who was a big fan of Thimbleweed Park and wanted to finance the sequel. Gilbert was not convinced.
“This is not the first time this has happened,” the famous designer told the outlet. “I said, ‘Okay, give me his email.’” And after chatting with the boy, who currently remains anonymous, Gilbert discovered that he was serious. So he put together a budget and plan for Thimbleweed Park 2, one he said was “very realistic,” and asked for just over a million dollars to fund development over two years. He wanted to make sure that the developers working on the game were paid properly this time.
The wealthy investor liked the plan and the two reached a deal that Gilbert said was better than any terms he had received from the publishers, and now Thimbleweed Park 2 is in development and will arrive in early 2028. But is there an audience for this type of game in 2026? According to Gilbert, yes.
“We are almost ten years away from the launch [of the original]and that game is still selling,” Gilbert said. “That tells me there is an audience for that game and games like it.”
So here we go. This is how we can save the video game industry: get rich people who like a specific genre or franchise to pony up the bill for future games. There is no way this could go wrong for anyone involved. Jokes aside, I’m happy that Gilbert gets to make another adventure game and I hope it turns out great when Thimbleweed Park 2 releases in 2028.
