Return to Monkey Island

Return to Monkey Island is a 2D point-and-click adventure game. The objective is to move the story forward by solving narrative-based puzzles. This can be done by exploring locations, talking to non-player characters to acquire information, collecting items and using them at the right time. The player controls the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who sails the seas and visits islands.

The user interface is different from previous 2D Monkey Island games. Tooltips over screen hotspots guide the player's actions: when the cursor is moved over an interactive zone of the scene, a brief phrase appears, suggesting what action Guybrush will take. The inventory uses a drag and drop interface to easily use and combine items and the interface has been designed to work with controllers or mouses.

Return to Monkey Island takes place on fictional islands in the Caribbean around the Golden Age of Piracy, as with previous games of the franchise. The game features a frame story that continues from the ending of LeChuck's Revenge, while the primary narrative is set after Tales of Monkey Island and follows Guybrush's journey to finally find the secret of Monkey Island. Along the way, Guybrush revisits iconic locations from the series, such as Mêlée Island (which is now under new management) and Monkey Island. He also lands on islands that have never been explored before in previous games, like the chilly "Brr Muda" and "Terror Island".

Several of the main characters of the series return for the game: the pirate Guybrush Threepwood (Dominic Armato), his wife Elaine Marley (Alexandra Boyd) and his arch-enemy zombie pirate LeChuck (Jess Harnell). Other returning characters include Murray the Demonic Talking Skull (Denny Delk), mapmaker Wally B. Feed (Neil Ross), used ship salesman Stan S. Stanman (Gavin Hammon), Mêlée governor and former swordmaster Carla (Leilani Jones Wilmore), and the mysterious Corina the Voodoo Lady (Wilmore). New characters include Captains Madison (Alix Wilton Regan), Lila (Annie Q.), and Trent (LeQuan Bennett), the three new Pirate Leaders competing with Guybrush and LeChuck to find the secret.

Ron Gilbert, the creator of the Monkey Island series, worked on the first two Monkey Island games before leaving the development company, LucasArts, in 1992. He often dreamt of making a new Monkey Island game but did not own the intellectual property rights. Further Monkey Island games were developed without Gilbert by LucasArts and Telltale Games.

In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired the rights to Monkey Island when it purchased Lucasfilm. At PAX 2019, Nigel Lowrie, founder of Devolver Digital, mentioned to Gilbert that he knew John Drake, who was in charge of licensing at Disney. Drake wanted to approach Disney about a new Monkey Island game. In December, Gilbert invited Dave Grossman, who had worked on the first two Monkey Island games, to work on a new installment.

In May 2022, after the first teaser video and a few screenshots of Return to Monkey Island were released, the art style drew criticism from fans online. Gilbert wrote a post on his blog explaining why the style was chosen and expressing his disappointment in the response.

A gameplay trailer was released on June 28 as part of a Nintendo Direct event. This reignited the backlash, leading some people to insult and harass Gilbert on social media and his blog. As a result, Gilbert disabled comments in the blog and said that he would not talk further about Return to Monkey Island. Several developers publicly criticized the user behavior and supported Gilbert and his team, including Cory Barlog of Santa Monica Studio and Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog.