Ron Gilbert Comes Back
Ron Gilbert had wanted to make another Monkey Island game since the day he left LucasArts in 1992. The rights, held first by LucasArts and then by Disney after the Lucasfilm acquisition, were not available to him. In 2013, Disney closed LucasArts and subsequently licensed the adventure game rights — making a deal with Gilbert and Grossman possible.
Gilbert partnered with Dave Grossman — his co-designer on the original two games — and with Terrible Toybox, the indie studio he had founded. Rex Crowle, known for the art of Tearaway and Knights and Bikes, was brought on as art director.
The result was announced in April 2022 and released in September 2022 through Devolver Digital. For the first time in thirty years, Ron Gilbert was making a Monkey Island game.
The Controversy
Rex Crowle's art direction for Return to Monkey Island was striking and distinctive: flat geometric shapes, bold colour blocking, and a visual sensibility inspired by paper cutouts and vintage print design. It was unlike any previous Monkey Island game.
Some fans were disappointed — they had expected something closer to the hand-painted art of Curse of Monkey Island or even a return to pixel art. The reaction was vocal and, at times, unpleasant. Gilbert addressed the controversy on his Grumpy Gamer blog, stating that the art style was exactly what he intended and that he had stopped reading comments.
Critics were broadly enthusiastic. The art style, whatever fans felt about it, was cohesive, purposeful, and well-executed. It gave the game its own visual identity rather than attempting to replicate something that had already been done.
Finally Revealed
Return to Monkey Island does answer the question Ron Gilbert posed in 1992: what is the Secret of Monkey Island? The answer — which is in the game — is both a direct narrative revelation and a meditation on the nature of quests, nostalgia, and what we look for when we seek secrets.
The game's structure frames the story as Guybrush telling a tale to his son, Boybrush — which allows Gilbert to play with memory, reliability, and the gap between the story you remember and the story that actually happened. It is a game about returning, and about what you find when you finally reach the destination you have sought for thirty years.