Making a sequel to an amazing game is hard enough, but with each subsequent entry that task gets even harder. So while 1991’s point-and-click adventure game Monkey Island 2 is seen as a stunning improvement over its predecessor, the more the series went on, the harder it was to recapture the original sparkle. That is partially due to changing taste in games over the years and who was actually behind its development, but the sentiment still stands. So when Return to Monkey Island, the sixth game in the franchise, released two years ago on September 19, 2022, over three decades after the original, there was no telling what we were going to get. And yet, Return to Monkey Island might just be the best game in the series to date.
The original Monkey Island holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. The 1990 title from LucasArts is an exemplary entry in the point-and-click adventure genre, as well as one of the funniest games around. For many, that success is thanks to the team behind it: series creators Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, and Tim Schafer (of Double Fine fame). 2024’s Return to Monkey Island positioned itself as a return to form for the series, and it had big names involved in its production that long-time fans were excited about. Grossman, who worked on the fifth entry in 2009, returned alongside Gilbert, who hasn’t been involved in the series since Monkey Island 2 in 1991.
Together, the team pulled off a truly amazing series retrospective by updating the classic gameplay loop, keeping the old humor, and subverting everything fans would have expected in its story. The point-and-click adventure mechanics of Return to Monkey Island have largely remained the same, but they’ve been gussied up for the modern age. Instead of the original’s frustrating SCUMM engine, whose convoluted text box interactions often made puzzles that much harder, now everything flows much smoother.
As the saying goes, you can never go home again, and despite the title of the game, Return to Monkey Island understands that. It might set up a grand pirate adventure reminiscent of the first game and you might revisit a number of iconic locales, but they’re the same as how they appear in the original Monkey Island. And that’s the point: thing’s change. Protagonist Guybrush Threepwood might still be the wise-cracking pirate you fell in love with so many years ago, but he’s much older. And furthermore, he’s old-fashioned— much like the player, Guybrush is thrown off by the way the places he once knew have changed with the times.
One of the best illustrations of this is Return’s pirate leaders. Guybrush expects to see the pirates he knows from the first game to still be running things, but when you finally come face-to-face with the i leaders it’s a trio of younger upstarts who have no respect for or knowledge of who he is. The old pirate leaders are there, but they’re just milling around on the street now, stripped of their old titles, men of no importance. This goes for almost everybody you meet—people have moved on from Guybrush and either don’t know him or don’t agree with his old-school mindset.
Monkey Island has always reflected its creators and their journeys through life, and Return is no different: Grossman and Gilbert return to the game that made them after 34 long years, and try to recapture the glory of the old days in a field now populated by annoying youngsters who very well might have no idea who the hell they are. Can they recapture what they had in 1990? No. Because they aren’t the same people. Neither is Guybrush or the player. Return is a Monkey Island game that looks back on the past and appreciates it for what it was, while also coming to terms with the notion that things must change to move forward. Two years after its release, Return to Monkey Island has aged like a fine wine, and it’ll only get better.
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