Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert isn't making a new Monkey Island game, but he's more than willing to talk about what he would do, if he had a chance to make the game.
"I am not making another Monkey Island. I have no plans to make another Monkey Island. I am not formulating plans to make another Monkey Island," wrote Gilbert on his Grumpy Gamer blog.
He continued: "But, if I made another Monkey Island…
"It would be a retro game that harkened back to Monkey Island 1 and 2. I'd do it as 'enhanced low-res'. Nice crisp retro art augmented by the hardware we have today," Gilbert wrote. It sounds similar to the recently updated versions of the first two adventures. "It doesn't need 3D."
He went on to explain that the game would be a "hardcore adventure game driven by what made the era so great," explaining that the game would have no tutorials, hint systems, or "pansy-assed puzzles catering to the mass-market." It would be an adventure game in which players would get stuck, frustrated, and find themselves at a loss at how to proceed—just like in the good old days.
He says that the game would come with a full inventory of stuff for players to tinker around with, and that there would also be dialog puzzles to meander around in. It's a feature, he says, that hasn't been reproduced since the days of Monkey Island.
"It would be called Monkey Island 3a," he wrote. "All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival.
"That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that."
Gilbert concluded that should the game get made, he would use Kickstarter to do it, but that he wouldn't fill it with "lofty promises or crazy stretch goals or ridiculous reward tiers" and simply deliver the game as he intends for it to be made.
"True, I wouldn't raise huge sums of money or break any records, but that's not what I want to do. I want to make a game."
Gilbert's most recent game is the critically acclaimed point-and-click adventure, The Cave.
