Return to Monkey Island

Terrible Toybox and Devolver Digital’s Return to Monkey Island hit all the right notes that proper homage to the original. It brought classic humor, a great story, and a new way to play the game to make it faster. It’s one of the brighter spots of a skimpy game release year.

Return to Monkey Island is a fantastic end to Guybrush’s compulsive search for the secret of Monkey Island and perfectly encapsulates what made these iconic games so popular in the first place. Despite the 30 year absence, not a step was missed, as Return is just as funny as its predecessors and seeing Elaine, LeChuck, Stan, and the rest of the gang together again is rather bittersweet. Charming characters – old and new alike, great dialogue, fun puzzles, an intuitive hint system, and a story which sees Guybrush visit multiple islands, all blend to make Return everything I had hoped for. I’m glad that I was able to finally uncover the secret of Monkey Island.

Still the new art direction will not be to everyone’s liking, and it remains one of the compromises made by the developers to ensure that Return to Monkey Island is relevant for 2022. And they managed to accomplish so much more, by developing a great game. It works both as a fan service for the point & click aficionados and also as a modern-day adventure game for newcomers. It has some minor shortcomings, but overall, it is once more a shiny standard of how good adventures should play and feel.

Though I still remain surprised that Return to Monkey Island even exists, I can't contest what Ron Gilbert and developer Terrible Toybox have wrought here. By masterfully combining the witty and thoughtful point and click escapades of the series past with a newfound warmth and charming aesthetic, Return to Monkey Island is by and large the series return that fans have long been waiting for and is a roaring success in the process.

At the end of the day, there were always some risks involved with Return to Monkey Island, and opinions are going to be divided among the hardcore fans and relative newcomers. What cannot be denied, however, is that this is an amazing point-and-click adventure that retains much of the beloved charm, while still updating the experience to be a more well-balanced affair. This is an excellent return, to say the least, and I can only hope this is the beginning of a new age that Terrible Toybox will be leading from the front.