Return to Monkey Island will have a hint system to help out stuck players

The upcoming Return to Monkey Island game will feature a hint system and 'casual mode' for players who need a little help with the adventure game’s puzzles. 

Speaking to Ars Technica (thanks Eurogamer), The Secret of Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert revealed some of the handy features coming to the sequel Return to Monkey Island, which is due to release later this year. 

According to Gilbert, the upcoming game will feature a hint system as well as a casual mode for those who have never played an adventure game or don’t have the patience for one anymore. 

"[One thing] that people really want in games today are built-in hint systems," Gilbert said in the interview. "[There was] a lot of stuff that we did back then and didn't think much about—a lot of very obscure puzzles," the developer continues, "hiding a piece of information somewhere with no clues about where to find it—that kind of thing just wouldn't fly today.” 

A lot has changed since the original Monkey Island games were released in the early 90s, meaning these days players will usually just look up a walkthrough when stuck on a particular part of a game. Gilbert is hoping a built-in hint system will deter players from simply looking the answer up, in the same interview Gilbert touched upon this adding that the hint system in Return to Monkey Island will be "more than just a walkthrough."

To make the game even more accessible to new players, Return to Monkey Island will also reportedly have a "casual mode" similar to Monkey Island 2 and Gilbert’s other game 2017’s Thimbleweed Park. This mode has been designed for "people [for whom] this is their first adventure game, or they haven't played adventure games in a long time, or maybe they have lives and kids now," explained Gilbert. 

"They can play the casual mode, which is just a lot of simplification of the puzzles." Gilbert adds, "that is our main way to get people into playing a point-and-click game if they haven't done it before."

Return to Monkey Island is set to release in "late 2022" and is being developed by Gilbert’s studio Terrible Toybox in collaboration with Devolver Digital and Lucasfilm Games. The sequel will apparently continue on from where Money Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge left off, but not much else is known about the project as of right now. 

Wondering what else you can look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2022 list.