“I never stop thinking about adventure games,” Monkey Island legend Ron Gilbert says, but as his roguelike nears release he doesn’t want to make another point-and-click simply “for nostalgic reasons”

I adore Monkey Island, and although I’m a few stages removed from outright roguelike detestation, I rarely catch the “just one more loop” bug. So I felt a pang of regret when point-and-click icon Ron Gilbert had ventured into the roguelike trenches. Gilbert, though, hasn’t abandoned the genre—he merely wants to twist it into uncharted territory.

“Adventure titles are always on my mind,” Gilbert tells Cressup on YouTube. “Actually, about twelve months back I sketched a tiny pitch for Thimbleweed Park 2 that felt, well, worth pursuing. So the spark never dies. Still, if I return to adventure games, it has to be something wildly fresh, not a routine retread.”

The 2017 debut of Thimbleweed Park was deliberately vintage, wall-to-wall pixels and verb coins included. Gilbert revisited familiar waters with 2022’s Return to Monkey Island, trading sprites for painterly art and streamlining the UI, yet the retro soul remained intact.

“Thimbleweed Park and Return to Monkey Island leaned hard on nostalgia, yeah?” Gilbert notes. “They existed to scratch that retro itch. Next time I want to rip up the blueprint—gameplay that ditches the traditional point-and-click cadence in favour of something alien.”

Gilbert is “fascinated by dropping a classic adventure into a fully 3D space, so you’re roaming a tangible volume instead of flat planes.” For now, though, it’s only a conceptual spark, not a staffed project. He praises Lorelei and the Laser Eyes—one of 2024’s finest releases—as “utterly engrossing,” even while acknowledging its puzzle-game heart beats louder than adventure pedigree.

“Whenever I circle back to the genre,” Gilbert adds, “the result has to feel bizarre, singular, anything but another stock point-and-click.”
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Adventure title. I still don’t know exactly what shape it’ll take, but it’s always on my mind, you know? Even when I’m deep into developing a roguelike and juggling other projects, that idea never really leaves me. If I ever fully commit to it, then yeah, that’s what I’d pursue.”

For the moment, Gilbert’s attention is locked on *Death By Scrolling*, a vertical-scrolling roguelike RPG that looks quite intriguing, even if it’s not my usual cup of tea. I can’t fault him for wanting to explore new territory—despite my fondness for traditional adventure games, no creator should feel tied to their past work forever. And thankfully, studios like Wadjet Eye are still carrying that classic flame forward.

The heart of point-and-click storytelling endures in many of the greatest narratives in gaming.

Dustin Bailey became part of the GamesRadar crew as a Staff Writer in May 2022 and is currently working out of Missouri. His journalism journey in gaming (with occasional detours into anime and wrestling) began in 2015, starting as a freelancer before spending nearly five years at PCGamesN. His passion for games ignited somewhere between *Metal Gear Solid 2* and *Knights of the Old Republic*. These days, he balances his downtime between retro classics, the newest blockbuster action-adventure, and long-haul trucking in *American Truck Simulator*.