Return to Monkey Island

Spoiler-free

Released on the international "Talk Like a Pirate" day, RtMI was at least automagically preloaded on the Switch, so I didn't have to waste most of my limited playing time installing and such. I didn't do long gaming sessions, as I guess was expected, something from thirty minutes to something short of a full hour. I also wasn't rushing around, instead I wondered and adventured in peace with all the time in the Caribbean.

My own Monkey Island history was limited to the multiple times completed first two games, and the third one I once loaned from a friend. The fresher entries (Escape and Tales) had somehow completely flown past me, but as this one was the part 3b, did it matter much?

As I was also absolutely oblivious to anything in parts 4 and 5, I also had no idea where they took place. Therefore I had no way of telling how many times we had returned to the Mêlée Island since tSoMI. None of that mattered, the scenery was familiar but also renewed, at least in the beginning.

You may have noticed that I clearly didn't say anything about how the ending of tSoMI 2 and the beginning of RtMI were connected. Based on my memory of the intro I saw once (a quarter of a century earlier) was a bit weird as it ignored its predecessor's ending.

🎶 The Scumm Bar - Ambiance 🎶

My first playthrough on Switch took, according to the device's own calculations, "over 10 hours" and I didn't dig out everything I could and poke absolutely every corner. To be honest, I had to ask for a hint a couple of times from the hint book, and only once to the deepest level. The hint book was a fun thing: you could ask if for a tip to complete one of the incomplete items on your todo list. First of the hints was very generic ("did you already hear about subject x?") and a dialogue option by dialogue option it got more and more specific, until at last it said something like "Go to the Scumm Bar and eat a candle!". The one time I really couldn't get it myself, the feeling afterwards was, as you'd expect: "aaaaah, of course". Gentle shame included.

The vast majority of the puzzles got completed just by going around and doing stuff accidentally the right way, or after a bit of head scratching. Some of the things got solved with the traditional "pick up everything you can as soon as you've seen it", so sometimes I didn't even know what I had solved when I picked it up, before seeing the puzzle itself.

Music of Monkey Island was again excellent and it changed by the situation, as it should. Maybe I could find the OST from somewhere to accompany the first two. As far as I could say, the voice acting worked fantastically, I just didn't remember more than two of the characters and one of them was Dominic Armato's Guybrush. Then again, when I was playing the originals, they didn't have voices but coloured text :D

I had barely finished the game on the Nintendo when I also installed it on to my work laptop. Just to go through everything again but with more familiar controls and a bigger screen. Also because I didn't want the story to end, when the game ended.

A double-thumb-up recommendation from me.

Another new effect experiment

Skirting madness

Who knew what sort of hubris I was riddled with this time, but I returned to poke the Shilone I had considered finished. You see, I had been somehow successful with the Jump Jet fire plumes and the AutoCannon's heat-mistreated metal, I thought I could challenge myself with an engine glow effect.

The engine nozzles of the Shilone were pretty tiny, and I didn't really feel like fighting with the airbrush and masking half the universe, nor did I want to go for a really strong OSL effect that'd light up most of the rear of the ASF. Somehow those have most often struck me as overwhelming.

Blending

So, it was time to jump from mere thoughts to actual actions. I knew that I was going to use the two blues I bought for my Flanker, and mix some off-white with them, so I searched for the paint pots. First one, Citadel Layer series Ahriman Blue was quite thick already so I also went for a plastic syringe (I seemed to remember we had a number of those for ear infection medicines and whatnot) to add cautious amounts of tap water. The second one, another Citadel Layer paint, Temple Guard Blue had dried up into a solid block so it got tossed out. Damn. My plan changed, but just a bit. For shading I used Insignia White (VMA 71290).

Effect test

To begin with I dropped a good lump of Ahriman Blue and thinned it slowly, until I had something that resembled paint more than play-doh. I expected this to be the last time I could use that paint, if Citadel's current quality was to be relied on.

This stuff I used to paint the three nozzles from the inside. It was going to be the darkest layer in the fierce glare of the fusion reactor.

For the next shade I dropped a single drop of off-white next to my blue puddle, and mixed a fraction of it into the blueness. Then I added some of this slightly lighter blue into the nozzles, covering a bit less than the previous time. Rather unsurprisingly I kept repeating this process for a few iterations. In total I mixed six always lighter shades of blue. The end result would've been more visible in larger tubes, but at least I had tried this out.

As the last step I painted tiny single bright dots into each of the nozzles, using an almost white paint. The point of this was to show the hottest spot in the whole shebang. My last photos didn't show them, thanks to the angles. From a normal distance the effect was pretty fun.

Another base plate

An aerial hex

This hex plate was a bit bothersome, as I didn't want to leave it flat black and pretend it was flying in deep space, but muddy goo also didn't inspire. My basic "sand and some weeds" approach didn't sound victorious, either, and I didn't have good sand right now anyway.

Prototyping

Then I remembered my slightly stiff technical Citadel paint that I last used on my Flanker's base/stand. A silly idea I got from that was that I could paint a layer of orange below, then the cracking while drying -stuff and then move from that.

For the first layer I painted two oranges (VGC 72008 Orange Fire; VMC 70733 Orange Fluo (RAL 2005)) in a random way. While wet the paint was much brighter than after the drying time (I also took the photos in different lighting conditions).

Technical mud, pt. 2

Much later I spread a thick layer of this goo (Citadel Technical: Magellan Earth), as I remembered an article I read and how that person told these things behave at different thicknesses, and how they recommended using these.

My Flanker's base had been coated pretty lightly, so now I thought I'll try how a thick layer behaves. My layer ended up being both thick and uneven, which I hoped to result in an interesting result.

After curing until the next afternoon the result was as follows. The goo splintered much less than what I had expected. My expected result was something like "a few large chunks with smaller bits around them" and I didn't really expect to see the fiery-glowy oranges to even show in more than a few selected spots.

Painting on paint

On top of the weak brown I drybrushed my darker general grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey) and then highlighting some edges with the lighter general grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey). Time-old traditions being honoured and whatnot.

Perhaps it didn't bring a half-molten surface of a lava world, but more like something pretty iron-heavy. But who in their right mind would allow the Kuritas to wage war on Mars itself?