Ron Gilbert Announces Return to Monkey Island

Let me take you on a brief voyage to the distant past. In 1990, over 30 years ago, LucasArts, the gaming counterpart to George Lucas’s film company, were the unquestioned kings of point-and-click adventure games. Utilizing their proprietary SCUMM engine, they released adventure classics like Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and of course, The Secret of Monkey Island. The original Monkey Island, as well as its first sequel, was written and designed by Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, and Tim Schafer, but after they all left LucasArts, the subsequent Monkey Island games were made without their aid or blessing.

This week, though, we learned that that’s about to change. Ron Gilbert announced on his personal Twitter this week that a brand new Monkey Island game, Return to Monkey Island, is coming out this year after being in top-secret development since 2020. 

Gilbert and Grossman have both returned to write the story and dialogue and design the puzzles, the original LucasArts music crew is returning to write the score, and the game’s protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood, will be reprised by his original voice actor, Dominic Armato. The game is being published under the Lucasfilm banner, with assistance from Devolver Digital and Gilbert’s own Terrible Toybox. 

Timeline-wise, Return to Monkey Island is a direct sequel to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, though it presumably won’t invalidate any story beats from The Curse of Monkey Island for those who still like that game. It’s probably fine either way, it’s not like this series takes its continuity especially seriously.