Ron Gilbert’s Monkey Island announcement was a joke ‘18 years in the making’

Ron Gilbert pulled off a joke that was perhaps the best April Fools joke ever. On April 1st, he wrote on his personal website that he was making a new game. He shared the official trailer for Return to Monkey Island, even though he was unsure if it was a joke or real. The game will be a return to the classic point-and-click era of the first two Monkey Island titles, with creator Gilbert returning, Dave Grossman back to co-write, and composers Michael Land, Peter McConnell, and Clint Bajakian writing the music again.

I had a chance to chat with Gilbert and Grossman about the game and its development. The team making Return to Monkey Island has revealed very little beyond what is in the trailer, and while Gilbert and Grossman didn't want to get into too many specifics, they did shed some light on what to expect when the game comes out sometime this year.

We talked about creating a modern point-and-click adventure, learning from past projects, and keeping the project a secret. We have included the first official screenshots of the game in this article. The developers provided the caption.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Image: Terrible Toybox

Why are you both going back to Monkey Island?

If you follow my website or follow me on social media, you will know that I am bombarded by people who want a new Monkey Island. I missed a sentence because I accidentally pressed something on my keyboard that turned on a video. Thankfully, I was quiet. I was very eager to get Dave into the big scheme when the opportunity arose. I think the timing was right at the bottom level.

I think we should do these things occasionally. We have some new things to say about the world of Monkey Island and I feel like Ron and I have evolved enough. The minute he called me, I was like, "Oh, this is a chance to work with Ron again and to revisit these characters, this world that I love, and to have some fun." I was in immediately. I think Ron was still throwing. When can we start?

Ron thinks you were more enthusiastic. I had a lot of doubts. 35 years from now, we can get together.

I'm in! I will call you in 35 years.

What do you hope to accomplish for people who have never played a Monkey Island game before?

They would like to correct that.

There were two camps that were very important to us when we broke apart the design. That was the fans of Monkey Island, the people who know the games inside and out better than Dave and I do. We wanted to build a really good, authentic Monkey Island, something that was going to really satisfy their desire for a new one.

We were aware that there are a lot of people who have never played Monkey Island who have heard about it. We wanted to make it easy for them to get into Monkey Island and not feel like outsiders when they first start the game. The story and design aspects of what we do are really important.

That is not a new problem. This is the thing that happens when you make a sequel.

Can you tell me how you are thinking about doing that? It is a huge challenge.

Gilbert said it was a challenge. Thimbleweed Park was a more retro-type game. We had people say that there was a lot of humor and jokes that were just kind of going above their head because they weren't entrenched in that old LucasArts point-and-click stuff.

Dave and I tried to explain the situations to people while they were playing the game, but not in a way that talked down to them. Explain the context of what is happening. If there was something that was going to go over their head, just to make sure they didn't feel like they were losing out on something. You don't realize it when things go right through your head. We were trying to serve those two audiences well.

If you think about it, a lot of that is down to the writing and this sort of standard practice. Characters who already have a history together are usually the first ones to start a story. You have to make sure that the history of those characters is important to the understanding of anything.

Image: Terrible Toybox

Ron, I'm curious what else you've learned about Thimbleweed Park, that you're applying to Return to Monkey Island.

Thimbleweed Park was geared as a classic LucasArts adventure because of the crowd funding. I felt compelled to do a lot of things because of the success of the project. Things like the interface being the same.

I think we were a little more free from that with Return to Monkey Island. Despite the history of Monkey Island, it was nice to be able to explore more openly about the art style and interface. I think the lesson I took away from Thimbleweed Park was to make sure you don't get entrenched in the past with stuff.

I was going to ask you how you are looking to keep up the spirit of what many of these classic adventure games represent without cruft or mechanics. How do you keep that balance?

Gilbert: We took a step back and looked at what was going on. How much of it is cruft? How much is nostalgia? Being able to look at how puzzles are constructed, how dialogues happen, and how the user interface works. There are all of these things. Being able to re-examine all that stuff.

This is still a point-and-click adventure. It is not a first-person shooter. It is not a kart racing game. It's a point-and-click adventure. So it's kind of figuring out, or really deconstructing, the point-and-click genre, and what does that mean? Making sure that we emphasize that point-and-click games are fun and not just a bunch of nostalgic things. Does that jive with what we went through?

That sounds right. Any element of the game has to support the story and the game. We tried to identify and rethink anything that was dragging either of those things back.

Can you give any examples? I understand that you don't want to talk about the game, but is there anything you can tell me about how you are trying to capture that?

A lot of games are played on consoles. There are a lot of excellent players, including PS3 and Switch players. We wanted to understand how these people would play a point-and-click adventure with a controller. It's different. There is a different mindset to it. It engages your brain in a different way.

We spent a lot of time thinking about a controller and how the game can be enjoyable if you use a controller instead of a mouse. Being able to do that but not detract from what the mouse is doing. A lot of controller-first games wedge the mouse play in. We tried to balance the two modes of play for people.

If I'm correct, the art style you mentioned is not going to be a pixel-based art style. Is that correct? When I interviewed Gilbert and Grossman, I didn't see the screenshots.

That is correct. The art in the trailer is representative of what the actual game will look like.

Dave and I had a discussion early on about whether or not it should be a pixel art game. We thought that we had more freedom and flexibility to not make a game that was a pixel art game. I think people will be happy with the art once they see it and the animation. When you start to see the game moving, it's really neat because we have an incredible group of animators on the project.

Image: Terrible Toybox

What has surprised you the most about this game? It sounds like you're close to the finish line since the release is this year. What has surprised you about the development?

I don't know if it will be surprising, but getting back together with Dave has been wonderful. Being able to talk and write with him. Dave is a better writer than I am, and I learned a lot from working with him.

It has been a great experience working with Michael Land and Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian, who are doing the music, just getting back together with them and falling into that 35-year-old glove.

I haven't done that in a long time. I remember when I first started this project, and I was writing code, and I typed the words "Guybrush" for the first time in 35 years. It was fun to look at the world again.

It is almost like not a day has passed. 30 years has passed.

I was very impressed, I would say, rather than surprised, at how smoothly it was, building this thing for two years with nobody being in an office together. It is a triumph of remote communication to get that to work. Keeping it a secret for the entire time. I can't believe we did that.

Is it an all-remote team putting this together?

That is correct.

What have you done to make sure this isn't made public? It was a great surprise last week.

Gilbert: Whenever we bring people onto the project, we have discussions with them about how important it was, how important it was to the project, and we would tell everybody what our launch plans were, the April 1st stuff. I think they understood how important it was to pull it off. The whole thing had to be kept under wraps. It is important that people understand that the game exists, and that the game is not about what is in the game. We didn't have a problem with the people we hired, which is great.

How long have you been planning to reveal the game?

It's really surprising that my blog is almost 18 years old. It makes me feel old. 18 years is a long time for a blog. I have always posted something on April 1st that was joke-free, because I don't like April Fools. I've always posted that, but now it's just a joke.

I wrote an article on my website about if I made another Monkey Island, and I thought it would be fun if I got the rights. It was a fun internal joke.

I realized that April 1st would fall around the time we needed to announce because of the duration of the project. I said that we need to do this. It felt like it was a joke 18 years in the making, so we need to announce it on April 1st.

It was part of our first conversation about the project. He wanted to do that. I was terrified at first. I didn't realize how brilliant it was until I woke up.

Image: Terrible Toybox

How much does the new game match what you wrote about returning to the series? I asked this question after seeing the edit you made to the top of the post.

There are a lot of things in that post that are completely accurate. I didn't mention how I was trying to make the game in complete secrecy. We pulled that one off.

I think the pixel art stuff is a little bit controversial to some people. I wrote that entry before I went to Thimbleweed Park. I think I did a lot of what I wanted to do with Thimbleweed Park, it was a little bit of a retro game. There is a lot of the pixel art stuff that isn't as accurate.

As you think about it, that article was something I just wrote. Reality and fantasy intersect when you start thinking about what the actual game would be. I think the spirit of what I said in that article still holds.

Can you give me an idea of the size of the team?

At our peak, we were about 25 people. Some people have stopped the project because we are near the end. At the peak, we were about 25 people.

Is that a typical team size? Is it kept small? What was the thinking behind having a team of that size?

Gilbert thinks that depends on the game. If you are building a triple-A game, your team size is likely well into the hundreds. Thimbleweed Park had 14 people at its peak. It was more than Thimbleweed Park, but not as much as Thimbleweed Park.

There is a kind of intimacy to the team that I think is very important when you are building something like Monkey Island. Lucasfilm had a team size of seven or so in the original games. I like building games that are small enough for everyone to contribute. If you're an artist and you have a game design idea, if you're a tester and you have a game design idea, or if you're a writer and you have a game design idea, the team is small and intimate enough that everybody feels ownership. They feel like this is their game.

I think projects get past a certain size. It was important for us to continue that because I believe that the original Monkey Islands was very successful. I wanted to continue that with this game.

Can you give me a sense of how the other Monkey Island games will factor into this one?

That is a difficult thing to discuss. The game picks up where Monkey Island 2 ended. I don't think we're ready to talk about the details yet, because how it all weaves into the whole world has been a lot of fun to figure out. It is what you would expect from us.

We could discuss philosophy because I think it might satisfy some of the itch you're trying to scratch there.

We realized that we can't build the exact game that we would have built in 1992 because we are not the same people. We like them, but we didn't want to just ignore them.

It is hard to keep track of all that stuff and our general philosophy was that we would adhere to existing canon as much as we could. Some of the games don't agree with each other, so you just live with it. canon can sometimes get in the way of telling a good story, and that is never a battle you want to lose. We just ignored it whenever it wasn't quite right.

Image: Terrible Toybox

I don't know if you want to talk about the game or not, but what about it?

The original composers are returning.

That aspect has been exciting. Getting Michael Land and Peter and Clint back on the project has been a lot of fun. The music is like Monkey Island. That is neat.

You mention that and I can think of how those soundtracks sounded. I think it would be great to return to that musical vibe with the composers.

The music is coming in now. As we are talking, more and more pieces are flooding the game, and it is just sort of expanding into a big mushroom cloud in my brain. There is more stuff in the game every time I see it. I like it.

We are also voice recording right now. Every time you play the game, there is more and more voice building up, which is exciting for me to hear.

How has it worked with the voice actors? The original Guybrush is back, and that must be really exciting.

He's so good. It's amazing. He wasn't around when we made the first games. I had never been in the studio with him before, despite being involved with Tales of Monkey Island. I've been to many conventions with him, but I never worked with him in the studio. He nails everything. His control is very good. Grossman will change the line to make it go from awesome to extremely awesome if you give him the tiniest bit of direction.

Dave called him the "Terminator of voice actors".

I should have.

How didmato react when he heard you wanted him to play Guybrush again?

He was shocked. We never worked together because we didn't have a voice back then.

I was at a point where I wanted to loop him into what we were doing. He was visiting Seattle that weekend because I live there. I said, "Hey, let's get together, just have a coffee, and I can tell you about my new game, air quotes."

I think he was interested in the new game and wondered if he could have a voice in it. He was floored when I told him that it was the new Monkey Island. I get a lot of reactions from people. One person started crying when I mentioned that I was making a new Monkey Island. They were very happy that this was happening. I think Dominic was floored that we were doing it.