Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman worked on both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge all the way back in the early 90’s. Now, the duo are returning to the series in the aptly named Return to Monkey Island and in the run up to its release have revealed the one puzzle they regret from their original time working on the series.
Chatting to GamesBeat, Gilbert and Grossman revealed the Monkey Wrench puzzle from LeChuck’s Revenge, which saw Guybrush Threepwood using an actual monkey to activate a seemingly broken pump, was a mistake, calling it “notoriously unsolvable” and “not a good design on several levels”.
“Even if you are an English speaker from a location where the tool in question is commonly called a ‘monkey wrench,’ and you realise that that’s what you need, you still have to make an astonishing predictive leap about how your actions will create that tool,” said Grossman. “Nothing in the game sets any of it up adequately.”
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