Thimbleweed Park

Thimbleweed Park is Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick’s love letter to the LucasArts verb-driven adventure: a dead body under a bridge, two FBI agents who cannot stand each other, a cursed clown, a game programmer written out of her uncle’s will, and a town full of vacuum tubes and thin fourth walls. This walkthrough follows Hard mode, which the game itself recommends; Casual mode drops many of the puzzles below. Several codes, phone numbers and answers are randomised per playthrough, and the text says where.

How the game plays

Nine verbs on the left, inventory bottom right; the Help option in the menu explains everything, and each verb has a hotkey. Hold the right mouse button to make a character run. The gear icon top right opens the menu; saving is manual (Ctrl+S). Switch characters with the portraits top right. Read the characters’ notebooks: they carry the to-do list. Specks of dust and many roadside objects (tuna tin, circus flyer, Atari cartridge, empty bottles) exist only for Steam achievements and are not mentioned again. Saves live under AppData\Roaming\Terrible Toybox.

Under the bridge

A foreigner follows a note found in his pocket. Look at the inventory: the note (a plan), a wallet with 252 dollars, a hotel key card and the PillowBear prototype. Talk to Willie, the drunk by the fence, about everything; he snores. Open the gate, walk right, look at the sign and the bulb: the plan says to kill the light, but there is no switch, so pick up the rock from the water and use it on the bulb. Cross the stream, follow the path to the tunnel under the railway, blocked by a fallen tree. A shadow with red eyes clubs Boris and drags him into the bushes.

The agents

Junior agent Reyes and senior agent Ray arrive; either can be played, the difference is flavour text; this guide mostly drives Reyes. Look at the body: Reyes takes the hotel key card. Ray gives Reyes the Polaroid; combine camera and film, photograph the body. Halfway to the tunnel, look at “something strange” and take the chainsaw. Look at the tree at the tunnel: red eyes, violin music. Back over the stream and the gate, up to the highway, right. The Pigeon Brothers’ van (two sisters in bird suits, plumbers, obsessed with signals): talk everything through; you cannot die or get stuck. Walk on: plastic rings and an empty soda bottle from the shoulder, past the cemetery, into town, where Ray rejoins.

Sheriff and coroner

The sheriff (every noun ends in -a-reno) waits at City Hall and sends you to the coroner. Coroner’s office: talk everything through, including the pillow factory fire twenty years ago, closed with the security guard blamed. Note the three PillowTronics machines. Take the fingerprint kit from the bottom filing drawer; it lacks tape. Upstairs, the sheriff: start from the last question; Ray takes over; they split up. Look at the ArrestTron 3000, try the PoliceTron radio (Reyes sings), take the fingerprint register from the top drawer by the door (or the desk drawer). Out and right.

Sandy’s Diner and Ransome

Past the Pigeons fixing a hydrant that blocks A Street, into the pink diner. Sandy, from the last topic up; “crazy clown” triggers a flashback. Ransome: read the to-do list, put on the nose from the clown doll, take the comic, pull the poster off the wall for a safe; give up on the combination; the top note on the board gives three clues (randomised; in this run the letter count of the Big Top sign’s first word, 10 for Stupendous; the flags over the entrance, 4; Carnival Joe’s children). Take the lawyer’s card and the IOU (meet Joe about the joke book). Outside, the manager-lawyer brings news. Left to the circus grounds: count letters and flags. Backstage right of the Big Top: hair gel, makeup, and 138 dollars from the swear jar. Amusement park left: Joe wants 1000 plus 138 interest before returning the book; ask about his family: eight children (random). Safe: 10-4-8, take 1000 dollars and four torn pages; one blows out the window. Pay Joe, get the joke book minus four pages. On stage, insult the crowd; “Hey you, ugly old woman with the hairy mole” makes Madame Morena curse him: the makeup will never come off. His lawyer quits.

Reyes: look at the menu and the flyblown hot dogs, say you are hungry, order a hot dog, be sick at the end of the alley; look at the locked doors and the bin; the red-eyed figure clubs you. Ray: the Pigeons want a VD-67 tube: right, to B Street, pick up the dime on the pavement (random spot), the phone booth with a directory by Ricki Lee’s, the former pie shop, now vacuum tubes; talk, get the tube, ask the rest, pick a new shop name (it appears on the sign). Give the tube: A Street opens; take their business card. Bus station at the end of B Street: Lenore Edmund-Mulch waits for her husband and son; from the last topic up; her sister Delores did something worse than any guess: she became a game developer.

Delores

In the Edmund mansion, read the to-do list, out through the hall to the mailbox: Jack the postman brings the magazine with the MmucasFlem ad. Back in your room the bell rings (timing random): a letter for Uncle Chuck, its stamps misprinted by bad programming. Upstairs, across from the stairs, right: Franklin and Chuck argue; give Chuck the letter, he leaves it on the desk; note the empty ink bottle. Your computer: apply; the questions about the MmucasFlem language are random; answer “let me think and pause”. Library: the catalogue computer finds the book; talk to Franklin; the spiral stair says Out of Order, take the sign and it works; upper level left: the MmucasFlem programming manual. Answer with the book. The printer produces blank pages: no ink. Ask Chuck about ribbons, take the bottle, ask how to make ink: soot and petrol. Fireplace needs wood: logs and a petrol can from outside; logs in; kitchen fridge: broken ketchup bottles hide hot sauce; read the label and use it: Delores breathes fire. Leave and return, scrape soot into the bottle, add petrol: ink. Ink the ribbon, load the paper, print: the application in an envelope, unstamped. Take Chuck’s letter from his desk; kitchen: glass from the left cabinet, fill at the tap, into the microwave with the letter, run it, take the letter with loosened stamps, combine, post. Five days later Jack brings the reply; it takes three or four tries in your room to open it; interrupt the dance, tell Chuck: he disinherits her.

Finding Reyes

Ray: back to town, Main Street, right to the outskirts; the sheriff reports to someone by phone. Behind the Quickie Pal to the toilet: red eyes are a camera’s lights once you flip the switch; take the toilet paper. Talk to Leonard the clerk: Willie has a wallet full of money; maps are gone, confiscated; bottles fetch five cents. The Vista: the sheriff will not let you into the county without a map. Reyes wakes in the sewer: left past the boxes into the tunnel, a red box with an emergency name (random) and a phone that needs a dime; the other tunnel’s ladder shows the Quickie Pal through a grate. Ray looks through the grate, talks, drops the dime. Ray reads the directory by the tube shop for that name’s number (in this run Thomas Hartman, 1946); Reyes dials and leaves a message (if you misdial, take the dime out and try again). The sheriff calls from a grate and leads him out.

Pick up your dropped notebook in the alley; bottle to Leonard for a nickel. A Street: someone watches through cameras. The Nickel News: Natalie, reporter, editor and publisher; her PoliceTron is waiting for an announcement (random: note whether it concerns a man or a woman and what they plan); the framed county map is a first edition, untouchable; the copier wants a nickel. Ray in the sheriff’s office uses the radio: “Attention all cars” and the lines matching Natalie’s announcement; she runs off, warning Reyes not to touch the map. Reyes: map off the wall, into the copier, nickel: the county map; hang the original back. Post office: talk to the postmaster, take the tape. Willie at the fire barrel demands a different wallet in exchange for his. Madame Morena’s occult shop: she can help in a trance, which needs the Plasticus visually-pleasing mushroom from the sewer. Show the sheriff the map at the Vista: the county opens; Ray joins; the map now teleports.

Blood and prints

Ray: take a map from the Quickie Pal shelf, Bridge, toilet paper on the body: too wet for the BloodTron; dry it in the Quickie Pal toilet. Old Circus: honk the clown horn, talk to Ransome, who becomes playable. Ransome: the hamster in the microwave is hungry; mouldy cheese from the fridge; on the grounds, the popcorn bag from the stand, gather popcorn, a rat steals the last into the Big Top; cheese by the hole, out and in, take the popcorn, feed the hamster, take the delivery slip off the board; post office: the parcel, a wallet of endangered feathers; swap it with Willie for the bloody wallet; give it to Ray. Ray: BloodTron: paper sample and wallet: the same blood. Reyes: Hotel, Natalie at the door: Franklin Edmund has vanished. Franklin flashback: he wants a room without Chuck knowing; the manager offers Chuck’s penthouse; right, the Annoying Kid with a boombox: switch it off, talk, “I know exactly what’s cool”, then “I knew this rad dude”, “Was on MTV”, “Told me that bandy is totally where it’s at”; switch off again, trade a PillowBear for the glasses disguise; out of the manager’s sight put them on, register under a name, take the key card (floor random); the tenth floor has no HotelTron cameras; copies need your own paper. In your room Franklin phones the investors, spots the camera. Take a sheet of paper, tenth floor: the standard-room photo from the stand, a sheet from each of three rooms, lobby: give the manager the project and the sheets for a copy; room: gum on the camera, photo on the gum; the security room blinks; Franklin calls the investors up, opens the door too soon and is tasered.

Reyes: finish with Natalie for the big-nosed man’s room and name; his card opens the room (random floor): the passport of Boris Schulz. The revolving door spins madly; the manager talks of ghosts and gives Franklin’s key card; in Franklin’s room the ghost world appears: Xavier, the head ghost, orders Franklin’s ghost to scare two guests at the fountain. Franklin’s ghost: the lift is elsewhere; Reyes calls it; the ghost rides with Clara (do not anger Xavier); Virgil spins the door; right, wait for the Annoying Kid to drink and Freeze the water; Reyes drinks too (“Aaaaah”), Freeze again; Xavier releases Virgil and Franklin.

The mansion and the arrest

Reyes: Edmund mansion: Doug the gardener digs holes to fill them; petrol can by the woodpile; inside, Delores is busy with the will and becomes playable. Bridge: fuel the chainsaw, cut the tree, into the sewer: light box at the entrance, right and into the back tunnel through the maze to Willie’s den: the ice pick and the mushrooms. Coroner’s office: tape on the pick for prints, prints then register into the FingerTron: Willie T. Wino, once a watch and violin repairman. FaceTron: passport and body photo: Boris Schulz, German businessman. The ArrestTron upstairs lacks a tube. Delores: Chuck’s study: take the AT-25 tube off the device; the robot’s tube needs a tube puller; the receipt for one, fully paid; a cheque stub to the lawyer Brent Baliwick from the ledger; read Chuck’s journal (Reyes and the dead guard share a name). Behind the painting left of the door, the FingerScanTron safe and the key to Chuck’s office, which works only with his print. Note the ASCII chart over your desk. Lenore wants the lawyer called: the directory gives his number (random); his machine says he is at ThimbleCon ’87. Quickie Pal for a map, tube shop: receipt for the tube puller, sheriff’s office: AT-25 into the ArrestTron. Ray hands Reyes the BloodTron report; Reyes feeds all three reports in: a warrant for Willie. The sheriff arrests him; the agents question him, then part at the bus station.

ThimbleCon

Delores: Willie in his cell hates the radio, stuck on 198.7 FM with the knob removed, and wants theremin music. The alley poster: ThimbleCon is at the hotel; the manager says tickets are won on the KSCUM radio quiz; the dragon upstairs confirms. Radio station: live on air. Meanwhile both agents check in disguised and find parcels waiting; at the desk they talk: Reyes “I’m investigating the old fire” and “to clear his name”, Ray “a Japanese company hired me”; they agree to get into the factory together. Ray opens her parcel: a special tool for the end of the game. Reyes: his father’s broken watch; Willie will fix it for a jeweller’s tool and theremin music. Ray finds the station’s number: busy. Delores: outside the station pull the tube from the PhoneTron with the puller and put it back: the phone system reboots. From the library phone call the station, answer three random questions, win four tickets, pick a name. Hotel desk: tickets; the dragon keeps three. The lawyer in the corner wants proof Chuck paid: the bank (now open), stub to Mr El Paulo for the cashed cheque; note the factory key on the wall. Lawyer, then the pizza man at the end of Main Street who flees: his poster. Library: the will demands everyone eat Thimbleweed berry pie, the reading in Chuck’s tomb, and the will decoded.

Decoding: the Graphic BASIC disk into your computer, will on the computer; fifteen minutes later it is hex, and needs Chuck’s lucky lottery number. Take the maths prize and the red-gel Sushiboy decoder. Nickel News: explain adventure games, ask about Chuck, find the lottery article in the stacks (number random). Decode, give the will to the lawyer. Pie: Ricki Lee no longer bakes; Chuck had the bushes torn out, one remains in the old forest with a bear; take the gloves. Morena’s: the dead head (Sep the navigator), push the lower ladder right, climb for the Book of the Dead. Quickie Pal: bear repellent. Trailhead: right, the scary forest path, follow the arrows to the bush, gloves: berries; Ricki bakes the pie; to the lawyer. Tomb: highway left, cemetery arch, long path to Chuck’s barred tomb; take a flower from the wreath. Hotel penthouse: Xavier is astonished; the rune room: light, Book of the Dead on the altar, flower on it, it glows. Franklin’s ghost in the penthouse talks to the book and rides its portal to the tomb, slips through the bars, pulls the lever. The lawyer reads: Franklin and Lenore get nothing, Delores a PillowTron 3000 T-shirt, everything else to a holding company, the county to be dug up for a server farm.

The factory

The T-shirt shows a tube diagram. The factory gate is padlocked. Bank: El Paulo keeps answering calls; Franklin’s ghost phones the bank from any room, and Delores takes the key while he turns. Unlock the gate. Reyes: pocket watch on the time clock: the right time is needed. Left, under the arch, left, the open door past clock 3: a photo of himself and his father wearing the watch; pick up the papers for the guard’s handbook. Delores at ThimbleCon: Sexy Riker builds ships in bottles with jeweller’s tools kept in his room, and is hungry; the lookalike contest room is dark; the dragon says third prize is a theremin record. Ransome: push the trampoline left until he says stop, climb the wagon; safety needs a spotter, so bring Delores beside the trampoline, jump, click the page on the antenna. Diner: the last three hot dogs must go, one each to Ransome, Ray and Delores (all sick in the alley); then Reyes orders a hamburger. Franklin’s ghost in the lift: Clara wants ice cream cake; Virgil at ThimbleCon gives ghost cake, Freeze it, give it; ask her favourite TV show (random); tenth floor, Hit the TV until that show plays, Hit the lift doors, Clara floats out to watch. Reyes gives Riker the burger; he rushes to his room: read the floor indicator, follow, see which door; Franklin’s ghost Hits the door from inside; Reyes takes the jeweller’s tools. Ransome (map from the Quickie Pal) at ThimbleCon: comic to Ken Tien for the hint book; Riker’s question, answer Star Trek, get the ship in a bottle; restore the pages to the joke book, enter the contest, any lines: third place, the theremin record; give it to Ray. Radio station: Ransome climbs the tower and throws the lever, the DJ leaves, Ray puts the record on and pulls the lever; Reyes gives Willie the watch and tools: the watch is fixed.

Time clocks: Franklin’s ghost phones the time-code service from the handbook (random number) for clock 1’s time; Reyes sets the watch in clock 1, clock 2 five minutes later, clock 3 five more; a dead forklift blocks clock 4. Battery: Franklin’s ghost watches the manager’s monitor for the guest’s room, Hits its TV, radio and lamp; Ray gives the manager the Pigeons’ card; scare again; the Pigeons arrive and Ray takes their wrench. Delores: wrench on the bolt, take the dead battery, fill the maths prize with radioactive waste, both to Ransome; at the Trailhead pour it in the puddle, leave and return, follow the glowing footprints to the pizza van behind an electric fence: battery on the fence charges it; the keypad code is on the pizza poster; through the van down to the bunker: Chet in the pizza suit, the conspirators’ meeting, the gift bag: C-4, foil, a floppy. Battery into the forklift, Reyes sets clock 4. The DoorTron lacks a PF-001 tube: Delores gives Ricki the T-shirt and she builds it; Reyes presses the button, the door jams; Pull with Reyes, Ray and Ransome, and Delores squeezes through; everyone follows.

Inside

Delores: right, downstairs, left; SR-1 robots block the corridor; open the panel; library IndexTron finds the reprogramming manual (random shelf); set the jumpers as shown; corridor left to the main hall; Chuck’s office key on the brown door: his journal, a glass, a hat. Ransome gives her the floppy and foil; floppy in the terminal, Chuck’s message; the computer wants a password; the painting recalls the fingerprint safe: soot from the mansion fireplace, tape from the post office (Reyes), soot on the glass, tape: a print; the FingerScanTron opens: the password book; type the office password (random), pick Quest (Chuck’s mod), play it with the hint book read through the red decoder. Chuck locks everyone in. Ransome: C-4 on the heavy door, set off with his candy toy. Delores: down the stairs; manipulators block the corridor: back to the terminal, play until the system fails, run to the red button; the infrared room: hat plus foil, wear it, walk through; the fan room’s service number: Franklin’s ghost calls, the fan stops, Delores squeezes into the hot secret room, he calls again and it restarts; up the ladder into Chuck’s office. Ray comes down the hatch and uses the special tool on the slot; Delores enters, Push the tubes, talk to Chuck: the Upper World, and the PillowTron must be rebooted. Everyone receives a gift. Franklin’s ghost: ask Xavier about talking to his daughter, how the crystal works, then “You’re a bully and a tyrant”; he weeps and Franklin takes the crystal; Delores comes to the secret room and father and daughter make peace. Delores’s gift is the inflatable animal, its hint in the Kickstarter video; save at the bridge, use it on the body: the wireframe world; walk to the factory, through the empty rooms to the wireframe PillowTron, into the slot, Push every tube, and Push the last one four times. Credits. Reload for the others: Reyes gives Natalie Chuck’s confession (a Pulitzer in minutes); Ransome gives Sandy the apology card and replays his act with kind lines; Ray gives the Game of the Year award to Ron Gilbert and takes the puzzle dependency chart before the NSA erases her.