Last night my brother and I got together to play some of a new game called Return to Monkey Island. It was a throwback evening in a lot of ways; hanging out with my brother, in my “gaming basement”, felt very 2015 or earlier. Not least of which because the game we were playing is a sequel to one of our favorite games from a long time ago, Secret of Monkey Island. I just looked it up, and that game came out in 1990, when I was 23. Crazy. Anyway it’s a throwback to the days of point and click adventures. While those were never my favorite genre, Monkey Island in particular has a soft spot in my heart for its hilarious aesthetic, slapstick comedy, and most importantly the “cartoon logic”.

For those not familiar, cartoon logic is the sort of thing that allows the Road Runner to paint a hole on a wall and then run through it. It uses puns, homophones, tricks of perspective and other techniques to convince you that something absurd is real. The added twist of doing this in a game is that you can make the player part of the experience by asking them to solve puzzles based on cartoon logic. So for example, at one point you have to make a mop, and all you have is a stuffed animal and a stick - et voila. It’s the sort of thing that you would do in Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid, and it makes me really nostalgic.

So this isn’t really a game review because we’re only about 10-15% done with the game, but I will say that it successfully reminded me of my youth and it’s well made.