After 40 years of adventure games, Ron Gilbert pivots to outrunning Death
If you know the name Ron Gilbert, it's probably for his decades of work on classic point-and-click adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Monkey Island series, and Thimbleweed Park. Given that pedigree, October's release of the Gilbert-designed Death by Scrolling-a rogue-lite action-survival pseudo-shoot-em-up-might have come as a bit of a surprise.
In an interview from his New Zealand home, though, Gilbert noted that his catalog also includes some reflex-based games-Humungous Entertainment's Backyard Sports titles and 2010's Deathspank, for instance. And Gilbert said his return to action-oriented game design today stemmed from his love for modern classics like Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, and Dead Cells.
I mean, I'm certainly mostly known for adventure games, and I have done other stuff, [but] it probably is a little bit of a departure for me," he told Ars. While I do enjoy playing narrative games as well, it's not the only thing I enjoy, and just the idea of making one of these kind of started out as a whim."