Casual Game Design

Notes on The Secret of Monkey Island

Spoiler warning: This article contains major spoilers for the game The Secret of Monkey Island. If you haven’t played the game yet, I suggest you skip this article until you have. These notes won’t make much sense if you haven’t played the game anyway.

When LucasArts re-released The Secret of Monkey Island on Xbox Live a few days ago, I was thrilled. Of course, I immediately bought and played it. I noticed how well-designed this game is, even by today’s standards. So, I decided to annotate a playthrough of Monkey Island to learn about its design. I did this merely as a personal exercise, but since I went through all this trouble already, I thought I might as well share my notes here. Please, keep in mind that this article isn’t meant as a review, but as a way to learn from great game design. Read the entire entry »