Return to Monkey Island and uncover more secrets, enjoy more puzzles, and get lost in the story. As I had never played a Monkey Island game before, I was excited to jump in and see what all the rage was about with their new installment.

Developed by Terrible Toybox, Return to Monkey Island is an unexpected, thrilling return to the series. It has been many years since Guybrush Threepwood was last seen up against his nemesis, the zombie pirate LeChuck and his pirate party of miscreants. Elaine Marley has turned her focus away from governing Melee Island, and Guybrush has found himself adrift and unfulfilled, having never found the secret of Monkey Island. As Guybrush finds himself in need of funds to set out on his expedition, he learns quickly that hip, young pirate leaders have pushed the old pirate legends out of power. This can only spell disaster and cause problems for Guybrush.

After hitting the New Game button, you select your difficulty. Choose between casual, for people who want easier and fewer puzzles to enjoy the story without much hassle, and Hardcore, for the people who want more of a challenge and more puzzles on your adventure. Regardless of which one you choose, you’ll have full access to a hint system. This hint system is great, and I will admit I needed it a few times. With it, you can use hints, up to a point, just to help you complete your next step, or tip all the way to the end, giving you pretty much the full guide for that current part of your quest. This hint system really helps you avoid spoilers from trying to find out what to do next by scouring the internet.

Once you’ve started your new adventure, you get a nice little tutorial teaching you how to play the game, control your character, and how to solve puzzles. As long as you are paying attention, this should be easy enough to follow, helping you get started on your adventure. With this game being a click-and-point adventure, the controls are pretty simple; click on what you want and where you want your character to go.

For the slightly impatient people like myself, double clicking makes Guybrush scurry a little faster to get where you want to go with a little more haste, and there is also a button to skip through or back in conversations, making it a little easier to get through dialogue you’ve already been through or to go back and read something you might have missed.

The gameplay was nicely paced for the most part, with challenging enough puzzles to keep me thinking and excited once I had figured them out. Well, for the times I didn’t have to use the hints that is. With this being said, there was a part of the game with a lot of back and forth which I felt a little bored doing, but as for the rest, I enjoyed the game itself. Luckily for me, the game has a scrapbook in the main menu to fill in some information from previous games. Even with this, there was still a few references I didn’t understand, but that’s to be expected not having played the previous titles

They’ve taken a whole new direction in art style from the original games, which I do believe a lot of long-time fans might not enjoy too much. As for myself, I did not mind at all as it suited the click-and-point adventure style of gameplay. The art style kind of reminded me of watching cartoons on Cartoon Network, and I guess this made me feel like a kid, giving me a sense of happiness and memories of waking up those early mornings to watch my favourite cartoons.

Voice acting and variation were quite enjoyable and well done, and the story kept me gripped throughout, with silly jokes and simple but effective storytelling. Accompanied with simple tracks playing in the background that varies depending on the current situation and location, plus a multitude of sound effects you would expect from a pirate game like swords clashing, coins jingling, and locks and doors opening, I was quite pleased with how it all worked together.

Return to Monkey Island, or in my case, My First Time on Monkey Island, had me quite pleased with the game, enjoying the playthrough, solving the puzzles, and enjoying the dialogue. I was a bit thrown off by the twists this game offered, but still had fun playing it. I do think with its new art style it will be very hit and miss with the fans of the original games, but don’t let that get in the way of the charm it has to offer.

Written by: MrVibeAU