Return to Monkey Island

Let’s start with the positives. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the new graphic style, but personally, I like it. Especially when you compare it to the rather rough 3D experience in Escape from Monkey Island. I still think the cartoonish visuals of The Curse of Monkey Island are the best in the series, but this new style is definitely not bad at all. So that’s the first big plus.

Now, let’s talk about the gameplay. I can confidently say this is the most comfortable point-and-click game I’ve ever played. Everything feels incredibly smooth and responsive—I never had to wait around. The character moves quickly across the screen, so you’re not stuck watching long animations and can focus on solving puzzles.

The inventory system is also very well designed. Items have a small red crossed-circle icon that disappears when you hover over the correct spot. This means you don’t have to manually try every item and listen to the same repeated lines over and over. Instead, you can quickly scroll through your inventory, and if nothing changes, you know it’s not the right place. It’s a small feature, but very convenient.

Another new addition is the trivia card system, and I absolutely love it. Throughout the game, you’ll find random cards with questions about the series (there are about 100 in total). They’re completely optional, but they add a fun extra layer while you’re running around trying to solve puzzles. Great idea.

The puzzles themselves are fair. I don’t recall any that felt ridiculous or overly difficult. The game also includes a built-in hint book, which is very helpful—you don’t need to look up a walkthrough online. I played on hard difficulty and only used hints four times, three of which were near the end because I really wanted to see how the story would conclude…

…and that brings me to the downside: the ending.

I really didn’t get it. It feels like the developers weren’t sure how to wrap up the story, so they went for a mysterious, meta, “interpret it however you want” kind of conclusion—something very David Lynch–style. Some people might appreciate that approach, but I’m not a big fan of it. Honestly, a more classic, even cliché “sailing into the sunset” ending would have worked much better here.

It’s probably just my personal preference, but that sense of confusion at the end did affect my overall impression of the game.

That said, it’s still a very good experience overall, and I hope we’ll see another entry in the series someday.

While my wife thought this game was too easy and a bit too long, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
This is a fully voiced point and click adventure game that plays similar to Lost in Play, just a bit easier. You can also understand what they are saying and the story is a lot better.
So we haven’t played any of the other games in this series, but it turned out not to be a problem. It was easy to follow along with the story regardless. In short, without spoiling anything, you play as this pirate who plans a return trip to Monkey Island to discover its secrets. He is a well known pirate and therefore has a lot of enemies, which you meet many of along the way. It is a comedic story, not so much a serious one, and this is what I really like about it. I found many of the characters you meet funny and I think they are all really well designed. The environment design is also just well done and very fitting to the theme of the story.
If you like story heavy games and you don’t mind the whole point and click thing, then I definitely recommend this.
Oh, and we played it on the Steam Deck, and it ran with no issues.
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Help me out by following my Curator, I’d really appreciate it!!

I just completed Return to Monkey Island; i've played all the other games and were very excited to get back into this universe. I did like it but there were A LOT of things I, unfortunately, didn't like. To start off positively, the art style and voice acting was great as usual. The story had a lot of great elements and the fast travel worked really well. The controls were okay but definitely felt like it was made for controllers in mind. Now for my critique: I really didn't like the fact that the game told me what combinations I could and could not try; in a point n' click game that's a big part of the genre so that kinda sucked. I really liked that the hint book was hardcoded into the game and in general I believe every game should be independant of online guides as those guides are only temporary in terms of longevity... but I hated that the hint book was so flashy and distracting. Everytime I opened my inventory it felt as if the game was trying to convince me not to find the solutions myself and instead open the book. I also didn't understand the whole "read prior dialogue" feature and I still have no idea why that was even a thing. I don't remember it ever being important for the gameplay. I also really didn't like the trivia cards. Yes, they were nostalgic but they heavily rely on the player having played all of the previous games and even I, someone who's completed them all, only got less than 25 right. I also noticed that some of the trivia cards had questions about this current game and about parts I hadn't discovered yet as of finding the cards, making it rather difficult to answer them. Well, and the ending could be a review of its own... *SPOILERS AHEAD* I just don't understand what they were trying to convey with all that build-up, the golden keys, hunting Lechuck to then do a 180. I imagined Guybrush and Lechuck having a final battle and then the secret would have been revealed or something... but instead I ended up in a 1:1 copy of Melee Island that Stan, apparently, had built. What ??? I'm so disappointed about that ending. I was kinda expecting the ending to be "there is no secret" but even that wasn't properly addressed. This game had a lot of loose ends that weren't answered, characters that weren't addressed and the setup didn't match the pay-off, simply put. The reason i'm giving this game a positive review is because Steam doesn't have a neutral review option and a negative review feels too harsh.

After more than 10 years since the last instalment in the Monkey Island franchise and more than 20 years since the original creators worked on the series, we were blessed with a new Monkey Island game.
Let’s get the new art style out of the way first. When I saw the screenshots and trailer, the visuals didn’t do it for me, and I was disappointed. But that changed while playing. The style immerses you in a storybook, puppet-theatre world where brilliant colours and fluid character movements come alive, and that’s when you begin to truly appreciate the game’s art direction.
The story takes us back to the pirate world we all love. The opening cleverly makes you think you’ll be playing as a young Guybrush Threepwood, but alas, it’s his son, serving as a tutorial for newcomers. The main story unfolds as Guybrush recounts to his son how he once again set out to discover the real Secret of Monkey Island, a mystery that has eluded us since the first game.
Returning to Melee Island is filled with nostalgia. Time has clearly passed, and the island has changed, but it’s still home to our beloved characters: the Voodoo Lady, Wally, Carla, Stan, Otis, and the cook, alongside new faces that almost feel like allegories for capitalism. These additions bring fresh energy to an already iconic cast, and interacting with each of them is pure fun.
The puzzles feel more intuitive than in earlier entries. That doesn’t mean they’re easy, but they require less trial-and-error and reward a more logical approach. You’ll face challenges you never expected, steal like a pirate, and even join the dark side, only to backstab your way out of it. All in a day’s work for a mighty pirate.
The addition of the trivia book is a delightful extra, though collecting every trivia card feels like an endless quest. Many of the questions span the entire franchise, so your Monkey Island knowledge will truly be tested. Then there’s the hint book, always hovering, tempting you to use it. I’m not convinced it was necessary; players used to complete games like this without hints. Why change that now?
The music and sound design transport you straight back to the world of the original games. The whimsy and charm never left, and neither did the excellent voice acting. The original voice of Guybrush returns, and it’s everything you could hope for. The writing is sharp and genuinely funny; you’ll laugh out loud, giggle, and chortle throughout. The only potentially divisive element is the ending.
Return to Monkey Island is not just a return to form; it feels like a goodbye. A tribute to its own legacy and to the path it paved for other point-and-click adventures.
And maybe, just maybe… the Secret was the friends we made along the way.

I started the game today again. I just can't play it. Finished it on PS5 but PC is where it belongs to.
This isn't a game, it is more. I just don't want to see the ending again.
This game has the saddest ending of anything I've seen in my life. It describes exactly what happened probably to all of the people who played all of the Monkey Island games in their youth.
Return to is a well deserved farewell. Like a Elementary School reunion after decades. Best friends meeting again, being kids for a couple of hours, remembering the foolish yet fun things they've done. Remembering everyones phone number, asking if Jeff can come out to play, buying sweets from our pocket money. Playing Monkey Island panicking about Disc 114. Memories, all the good, all the bad, all the fun ones.
Now, we are grown up, showing around photos of our kids and family. Talking about work, the world, all the stress and joy we have.
Our last ride ends on a bench, sitting next to each other, talking about that we still stay in contact all of us knowing that this will not really happen, one after another just fades away, all back scattered around the world. You are sitting there alone and think. The good old fun days, let's keep them in good memory. Sometimes we can say Goodbye with a smile on our face.
Thank you and we'll miss you Guybrush.

This game was played in its entirety on a MacBook Air M1 8gb ram 7c gpu running MacOS Sonoma. There were no bugs or crashes throughout my time with the game. All achievements unlocked at their appropriate times.

This was a fantastic adventure, full of charm and wit. The player should know, however, that the entire endeavor has a bittersweet aroma about it, especially if you read all of the "extras" that will be available to you after you complete the game. There may or may not be another Monkey Island adventure.

Well, with that out of the way, let's get to the positives and negatives.

The Good:
The writing is phenomenal, as always. You'll laugh, you might cry, you might even be moved by the end. There isn't a single spelling error, grammar snafu, or punctuation misplaced in the entire script. That's impressive!

More impressive is the voice acting! Dominic (Guybrush) has never delivered a bad performance in my opinion. But some of the supporting cast have not always been so fortunate. This time, however, everyone is delivering their lines expertly. Every single character in this game has amazing voice work. Standouts include LeChuck, Boybrush, Elaine, Carla, and Iron Rose. Everyone is a joy to listen to, and it's such a shame that you'll inevitably feel that you can never hear all of the voice work, because so much of it is tied to actions you've taken potentially hours in the past.

The artwork is really great. The puppet style is not generally one of my favorites, but you can barely notice the style here. It's puppet-adjacent, perhaps (what a horrifying sentence!). Everyone animates extremely smoothly, and all of the sets are really fun to look at and explore. Most locations have a skewed fish-eye effect, which again is not my favorite, but it's a hallmark of Monkey Island games so I cannot complain about their inclusion.

The length of the game is just right. My full play through took over 20 hours, but a lot of that was for collecting every trivia card (more on them later) and reloading and exploring other paths when a "huge decision" has to be made. After the full play through, I completed the speed run in an hour and 10 minutes or so. You can really dash through everything if you know what to do, and I do like that they made this an achievement (I normally hate speed run achievements) because it was actually a lot of fun to zip through everything at top speed, consequences be damned!

The puzzles in the game are close to top-tier. None will drive you to a guide or walk through, but some will have you scratching your head, and you might have to backtrack a bit. As with all MI games, the opportunities for actual death are quite rare, but they do exist so frequent saves are always recommended. I really liked the difference between casual and standard mode. I also liked the difference when the "Writer's Cut" was enabled. The randomized riddles were my favorites, as they demanded a good memory and clever reasoning.

The trivia cards were my favorite bit of the game! You can start collecting them almost from the very start, and you could still be collecting them at the end. That is, unless you love them like me, and are also crazy, and then you can get every one of them (well, minus one, so 169/170) right at the start of the game! Yes, it took many hours, but these trivia cards span all Monkey Island games, and even delve into other LucasArts games, the company itself, and interesting trivia (some of which I did not know!) about the creation of these games. Truly great stuff. They added more cards at least once since the launch of the game, and I hope they do so again!

Now, on to the The Bad:
One thing I don't like is that the controls are stiff. You could open your inventory, select an item, use it on another item (or object in the world), but if you reopen your inventory at any point during the "usage animation" (whatever it may be), you'll stop completely. That seems odd and weird. Also, you can run when you double click, but for some reason it was always exceedingly difficult to get Guybrush to do so. I'd frequently have to double click several times until he would finally start running.

Not the best controls, but they did not hamper the speed run in the slightest, so this is just a nitpick.

The ending will, again, be controversial. It's certainly not a huge surprise (can't say more or people will guess), and I did wind up liking it. I do see that it could really lessen certain people's enjoyment of the game (and maybe series) as a whole. But, I really grew to enjoy the ending after reading through Guybrush's Scrapbook (more gets added to it as you play the game) and the final "hidden" letter is...well, it definitely hits hard. The older you are, the harder it hits. I'll say no more.

Another small negative is that the game forces you to watch the credits, in full, to see the final scene of the game. They are ten minutes long. But if you love the game, is that a big deal? What if I told you that there were TEN DIFFERENT ENDINGS? And yes, I did spend nearly two hours with the credits scrolling (on mute after the first time!) to see every scene. I found out later that several websites have all of them for easy viewing, if you want to save yourself some time.

The final negative is the largest. And that negative is that it is fairly obvious, as you play the game, that they really ran out of time at the end. Most of the end-game islands have nothing (or almost nothing) on them, despite having numerous beautiful locations. Similarly, I can count at least five important people in the game that have no ending whatsoever. They have important lines (and animations) right near the end, and then nothing. It might have been better to just pull some of those extra bits of dialogue, and even give us some text at the end, showing or telling us what happened to some of our favorites (or some of our hateds!).

But that's about it for the negatives.

Overall, a joyous experience, and I highly recommend this game to anyone that loves adventure games. You MUST play the other Monkey Island games first, however. A subpar experience in this game is your only reward if you do not.

Thanks for reading this far!

It is an ok quest but sad at the same time. Just to remember childhood adventures