There’s a new chapter in the Thimbleweed Park universe, borne out of creator Ron Gilbert’s feelings about isolation and toilet paper-hoarding during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s called Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure, and it’s free through both Steam and the Epic Games store.
As you might have guessed from the title, this free mini-adventure sees one of Thimbleweed Park’s main characters return to the park for a quick vacation’ from her job developing adventure titles for MMucasFlem Games (a nod to Gilbert’s own time with LucasFilm Games). It’s set a year after the events of the main game, and Delores decides to sign on with the hometown newspaper as a stringer photographer.
Playing as Delores, you’ll have to explore Main Street to complete assignments from the newspaper, and along the way you’ll encounter the kind of charming point-and-click puzzles that made LucasFilm Games so much fun back in the SCUMM Engine days. That engine was Gilbert’s original creation, and Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure arose out of his latest efforts and rewriting the engine for Thimbleweed Park.
Here’s the trailer:
Delores from Thimbleweed Park on Vimeo.
On his blog, Gilbert says building Delores’ mini-adventure helped “keep me sane” during the isolation of the pandemic, and while it began as a way to waste time, it quickly blossomed into a more complex project. Several of the original Thimbleweed Park developers eventually came on board to help, creating the game with ‘found art’ they had from the original Thimbleweed Park’s development.
“A strange little game for the strange and stressful times we find ourselves in,” Gilbert writes.
As mentioned above, you can download and play Delores for free via either Steam or the Epic Games store. For more games like Thimbleweed Park, check out our list of the best adventure games on PC.