Turns out Ron Gilbert’s April Fools’ joke wasn’t a joke at all. He is indeed working on a new entry in the classic Monkey Island adventure game series, titled Return to Monkey Island, and it’s set to release this year. You can watch the first trailer for the game here or at the top of this post.
According to the YouTube trailer’s description, Return to Monkey Island is a “long-awaited follow-up” to The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. Protagonist Guybrush Threepwood is back, and he’ll once again be voiced by Dominic Armato.
The trailer reveals that Return to Monkey Island is being made by Terrible Toybox, the developer of the 2017 old-school adventure game Thimbleweed Park, in collaboration with Disney-owned Lucasfilm Games, which was involved in the first four Monkey Island games under the LucasArts banner, and Devolver Digital. Rex Crowle, who was involved with the design of some good-looking games like Tearaway and LittleBigPlanet, is the art director, which likely means that the game will have a great sense of style.
We don’t know much else just yet, though you might want to bookmark the game’s website so you can check it for future updates. In 2013, Gilbert wrote a blog post titled “If I Made Another Monkey Island” — perhaps that has some clues about what we can expect? And that same year, he did promise that if he ever was to make another Monkey Island game, he’d announce it on April 1st.
