Thimbleweed Park's Ron Gilbert feels modern adventure games "get too lost in story"

Ron Gilbert's next adventure game Thimbleweed Park, will focus more on puzzles than story, much like classic adventure games of the past.

Speaking with GamesRadar, Gilbert said modern adventure games tend to focus too much on story, thus any puzzle element feels "tacked on."

“Classic adventure games were really about the puzzles,” he said. “We want to get back to that. Puzzles drive everything and it seems that modern adventure games tend to get too lost in story, and puzzles are just something tacked onto that. Also verbs. I loved the verb interface and I do think something was lost when adventure games got rid of them."

Gilbert also feels many games are now too easy and while that's "not necessarily a bad thing," there are many adventure game fans who still prefer a challenge which is why Thimbleweed Park will contain two difficulty settings.

"There are very different kinds of people playing games these days and they are a lot more ‘casual’,” he said. “But there are also people that like hard games, especially adventure games, and for us the difficulty is part of making a classic adventure game."

Thimbleweed Park, according art director Gary Winnick, takes the team back to its roots and is a "parody of Twin Peaks, The X-Files and True Detective with a bit of Stephen King tossed in as well."

The Maniac Mansion spiritual successor looks much like a game Gilbert and co. would have created back in 1987, as the team chose to eschew modern graphics for a more old school appeal.

The game is slates for release in June 2016 for Linux, Mac and PC.