Puzzle Dependency Chart

Ramón Wilhelm Sep 02, 2026

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Almost. My birthday was 4 hours ago. :D

Arnaud Launay Sep 02, 2026

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soon, it will be the 10 :-)

Mark Sep 02, 2026

Does it really make sense for ■ to depend on ■?

Pixel Prophecy 🇵🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺 Sep 02, 2026

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You're about a week off my b-day so I consider it an early present. 😊👍

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 02, 2026

Does it really make sense for ■ to depend on ■?

40+ years of game design experience says "yes".

Elissa Sep 02, 2026

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That's a LOT more complex than the puzzle dependency chart for Deck & Conn, which has no puzzles.

tcmsurfer Sep 02, 2026

"Progress" is made and shared.

Thank you!

I guess uncensored puzzle dependency chart could be used by speed runners eventually (?)

Sameasihadontwitter Sep 02, 2026

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puzzle dependency crave sub quest - completed. Oh and I got a vision and filled in the blanks

Torsten Bronger Sep 02, 2026

And all dependencies are “and” relationships? No “or”s?

Stan Sep 02, 2026

So much redacted that it looks like the final boss is President of the USA :V

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 02, 2026

And. All dependancies must be true (solved).

Ertain Sep 02, 2026

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Oddly enough, next week is the birthday of this guy that I'm in a community with (it's some vtuber community). He wants the vtuber to play Monkey Island for his birthday.

Donald Sep 02, 2026

It's the Epstein Files adventure game.

Roman Sep 02, 2026

Oh no....I can skip the whole flashback part if I do one fatal decision...

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 02, 2026

Not how PDC's work. They aren't flow charts, the are dependency charts.

Gins Sep 02, 2026

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I hope there will be some tough loose ends (optional puzzles) that add replay value. I think Return had some and I loved that.

Ian Malcolm Sep 02, 2026

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Node 47 and 73 are classic. Nice one. 😉 👍

Sushi Sep 02, 2026

I’m intrigued by that tutorial section further down. May be learning how to shoot your gun, once you get it? From then on every puzzle is solved with the gun. Yeah… must be it.

(But make sure there are no bullets in the game. Then patch the first game that everyone will replay, to insert a box of bullets that are for another game)

Major Tom Sep 02, 2026

Beginning too linear. Also, you still insist on making these things vertical! Time is horizontal! Though I guess it's good for browser scrolling...

PiecesOfKate Sep 02, 2026

When you're working out puzzle chains, I'm assuming most of the time you start with the objective and work backwards (unlock the box < bribe the local chicken psychotherapist who has the key < find a tiny antique shrink couch < etc). But do you ever approach it the other way around? Maybe if you have a fun idea for the process part?

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 02, 2026

Both ways, usually there is a objective, but sometimes there is a good/funny idea for the start and work forwards. It's an art, not science.

El Barto Sep 02, 2026

I had to read Grumpy Gamer's old blog post about the Puzzle Dependency Charts to fully grok the new blog post :D

Wanderer Sep 02, 2026

Today *is* my birthday! :-)

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 02, 2026

I had to read Grumpy Gamer's old blog post

I added a link.

Torbjörn Andersson Sep 02, 2026

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Every time I hear adventure game news. (The answer is, and always has been, "Yes. But thay day is not today.")

ct Sep 02, 2026

"KEY" is still visible :-)

MacBalance Sep 02, 2026

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Finished a replay of the first #thimbleweedpark pver the weekend. I’ll be putting up a short tremor review as soon as I can write coherent thoughts.

Sushi Sep 02, 2026

Ron, what tool do you use now for drawing them (I remember you moved from Mac to linux) ?

Jamie H Sep 02, 2026

If you get a coin, you can actually scratch the black off!

Skelovade Sep 02, 2026

it's sooo cooL to see the importance of both of these charts and I think your best words were "Flowcharts are great if you’re trying to solve a game, Dependency charts are great if you’re trying to design a game."

Tom Hunter Sep 02, 2026

"And. All dependancies must be true (solved)." -> That's why they are not flow-charts I guess. In flow-charts it would be "or", i.e. you can reach a node either way and continue from there.

BB Sep 02, 2026

If you're already so close to flowcharts, go all the way and add boolean operators. Everyone already reads AND, some want OR, but the missing one is NAND: solve two puzzles and the door locks again. And we need another color for nodes that only work in English. Pretty sure there was one of those on the MI2 chart. ;-) Love everything you do, keep it up!

Nicky Ramone Sep 02, 2026

You can clearly tell that a few mansion puzzles are there in the yellow middle section. Not.
I love seeing this.
Thanks!
PS: The captchas on this page will soon need a dependency chart.

Donald J. Trump Sep 02, 2026

THIS IS THE GREATEST GAME in development that we've ever seen. MOST LIKELY OF ALL TIME. In fact i told Melania "You know what's worse? Getting your Willy compared to a fly agaric or not being able to fund the development of another BRILLIANT EPIC POINT & CLICK ADVENTURE from Terrible Toybox? I said without hesitation we're funding the project. We need more adventure games in this world!". We've began creating something really special. Ron & the team welcomed my involvement with open arms. Especially David Fox he seemed really happy to see me. This time there's no monkeying around. It’s you know. It’s really incredible when you look at what's happening. Anyone that said that Point & Click games is a thing of the past? I've got two words for you. FAKE NEWS! PS. Ransome is my favourite character. He reminds me of someone. DS.
President DONALD J. TRUMP

Paul T Sep 02, 2026

Is there a way to send a few $$$ for coffee/tea/fruit drinks that the team could enjoy during the late hours? I took one look at the chart and needed a swift ginger ale with a twist. Thanks for all you do, TWP2 Team.

chris b Sep 03, 2026

playability suggestion. would be nice to be able to transfer an object to a different character without having to move the character to the other characters location. invent a teleport gizmo to allow such a transfer. you can even add it to the puzzle dependency chart and make it be part of a puzzle.

tg Sep 03, 2026

VERY puzzling!

Jonny Sep 03, 2026

If we cut the arrow leading back to the right from the bottom of the first diamond below and left of the tutorial, we have a pointless progression right there. AKA side quest. Interesting 🤔

Azrapse Sep 03, 2026

How do you approach the design?
Are you more the kind of storyteller who wants to tell a story with a set of points, so you have a skeleton you flesh out with puzzles, characters, and situations?
Or you are more like a sketch comedian, where you have disparate jokes / puzzles / ideas you have come up with over the years, and you chain them together, with the story being just a vehicle to deliver them?

HayStack Sep 03, 2026

Will you make T-shirts or any other merch? Would be fun! And a nice way of support now when there is no Kickstarter

René Kint Sep 04, 2026

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It WAS my birthday :-)

Michael Knudsen Sep 04, 2026

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do you have a formalism for the PDC in the code in which the graph is expressed and conditions are set and cleared?

Say node to drugs Sep 04, 2026

I love puzzle dependency charts. I recently lay awake in bed all night, feverishly devising structural ideas that get dangerously close to quantum dependency:

1 - Arrow from Flashback Nodes into a late-game Red TBD Node: Enables Flashback-Forcing. For example, you retroactively rewrite history by forcing a character to put an item in a safe 20 years ago, bypassing present-day lock logic.

2 - Connect the chart directly to the Inventory System: The player gets an in-game marker that lets them redraw dependency arrows in the pause menu, thereby forcing past-state logic onto current inventory constraints. Naturally, changing one arrow invalidates six other puzzles.

3 - A Floating Node drifting in unanchored orbit around all other nodes: Disconnected from every branch, it continuously clips through active nodes. Puzzle logic is randomised exclusively during the precise seconds when it overlaps another node.

Enlo17 Sep 05, 2026

As it is a draft I wonder: how flexible are these charts in terms of changes?

How do you properly cope when something in a heavy dependable part needs to change, do you start over or just 'tear it open ' and add / alter things?

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 05, 2026

I change them every day as we're doing the design. I don't hand places the boxes, they are done automatically. I use a Mac program call OmniGraffle and they use the open source tech called graphviz to rebuild the chart when they change. It takes less than a second.

Enlo17 Sep 05, 2026

Ok that sounds really cool and totally different than I expected thank you for the insight!

Is it normal for the chart to keep changing even deeper in the development phase?

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 05, 2026

There will be a point a few months into production that I will stop updating the chart. The team will have it all in their heads and changes will be tracked differently.

DocCrane Sep 05, 2026

Thanks for sharing, Ron. Even though redacted, it gives a nice first impression. I was wondering about the 8 red boxes in the middle, if which seemingly 7 are a dead end. Or am I missing something?
Thanks for opening up on the development process like in TWP1 and still trusting us as a community, even after all the strenuous happenings around RtMI. Much appreciated !

Enlo17 Sep 05, 2026

Thank you Ron for answering, it is really nice to be so close to the process without spoiling anything.

Can't wait to read more.

Ron Gilbert ✔ Sep 06, 2026

I was wondering about the 8 red boxes in the middle

They are yack dialogs you have with people, they might or might not connect as clues. Once they are written we'll know.

Moonpie Sep 07, 2026

gonna need more work days off :)

espie Sep 09, 2026

Really like the yEd - Graph Editor. It has very nice customizable edge routing algorithms (and node layout if desired). To me it looks like a very viable cross-platform alternative to OmniGraffle.

(Disclaimer: Have not created any Puzzle Dependency Graphs/Charts - but used it for DFDs etc.)

Big Red Button Sep 10, 2026

I used yEd, too, ten years ago. Good tool that would have done this trick, too.

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