On October 15, PlayStation Plus Game Catalog – available to all PS Plus Extra and Premium members – will add ten new titles to its library, including Dambuster Studios’ zombie-slaying action RPG Dead Island 2, Terrible Toybox’s acclaimed point-and-click throwback Return to Monkey Island, Supermassive’s interactive horror adventure The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me, Two Point Studios’ sophomore business simulation outing Two Point Campus, Nomada Studio’s narrative platforming adventure Gris, and IllFonic’s asymmetrical multiplayer title Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, among others.

On the same day, those subscribed to PlayStation Plus Premium will also get access to a couple of survival horror classics in Capcom’s Dino Crisis and PlayStation’s own Siren, while PlayStation VR2’s The Last Clockwinder will also become playable for subscribers.

You can view the full list of games being added to both libraries below.

PLAYSTATION PLUS GAME CATALOG

• Dead Island 2 (PS5, PS4)
• Two Point Campus (PS5, PS4)
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me (PS5, PS4)
• Gris (PS5, PS4)
• Return to Monkey Island (PS5)
• Ghostbursters: Spirits Unleashed (PS5, PS4)
• Firefighting Simulator The Squad (PS5, PS4)
• Overpass 2 (PS5)
• Tour de France 2023 (PS5, PS4)
• Ghost Recon Wildlands (PS4)

PLAYSTATION PLUS PREMIUM

• The Last Clockwinder (PS VR2)
• Dino Crisis (PS5, PS4)
• Siren (PS5, PS4)
• R-Type Dimensions EX (PS4)

Return to Monkey Island is a critically-acclaimed sequel to the Monkey Island franchise, which prior to its release had been considered long-dead by many. The game revolves around the final adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, and features several characters both new and returning.

The Android and iOS release of Return to Monkey Island was announced earlier this month, complete with pre-registrations for players who’d like to take their adventure games on the go.

Return to Monkey Island has seen quite a bit of success since its release last year, and while we don’t have precise sales figures, publisher Devolver Digital has described it as the fastest-selling game in the franchise.

For more details about Return to Monkey Island, check out our review.

Publisher Devolver Digital and developer Terrible Toybox have announced that Return to Monkey Island is headed to mobile devices. It will launch for iOS and Android on July 27, with pre-registrations now available on the App Store and Play Store. Check out the announcement trailer below to see it in action on mobile devices.

In our review of Return to Monkey Island upon its launch, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Given how easy it was for Return to Monkey Island to go disastrously wrong, it would very honestly be tempting to call it nothing short of a miracle that it is as amazing as it is- but honestly, that would be doing a disservice to Ron Gilbert and the team he’s assembled, and the incredible work and passion they’ve put on display here. They have all come together to deliver what mostly felt truly impossible at this point in time: a true, new, modern Monkey Island game, one that is so convincing at recreating the heights of the series’ heyday, it feels like that heyday never ended.” Read the full review through here.

Specific sales figures for Return to Monkey Island haven’t been revealed since its launch, though Devolver Digital announced in October last year that it was the fastest-selling game in the long-running adventure franchise.

The trailer for the crossover, dubbed Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island, features the return of many iconic characters from the Monkey Island franchise. It shows off Melee Island, series protagonist Guybrush Threepwood, and several side characters as well, including Elaine, ghost captain LeChuck, and even Murray the Demonic Talking Skull.

The adventure will feature point-and-click-styled puzzles inspired by the Monkey Island franchise and adapted for the first-person gameplay in Sea of Thieves. To prevent interruptions from other players, the adventure will take place in the Sea of the Damned.

In its entirety, The Legend of Monkey Island will feature three Tall Tales, and will be available for free to all Sea of Thieves players on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

As the first new title in the series by original creator Ron Gilbert, the sequel is after the events of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. It follows protagonist Guybrush Threepwood several years later as he embarks on a journey to discover the Secret of Monkey Island. He’ll encounter familiar faces, travel to locations like Brr Muda, Terror Island, and Melee Island, and solve bizarre puzzles.

Return to Monkey Island is also available for Nintendo Switch and PC and has become the fastest-selling game in the series. It may also be the last title in the series, billed as the “thrilling conclusion.” Time will tell if that holds, so stay tuned and check out our official review here.

Having launched earlier this year, Return to Monkey Island, alongside marking the return of a decades-old franchise, also marks the return of one of the franchise’s creators, Ron Gilbert. The game has been critically acclaimed, as you can see from our review, and has even ended up as the fastest selling game in the franchise.

Return to Monkey Island is the sixth full game in the franchise. Taking place an indeterminate time after the events of Tales of Monkey Island, Return to Monkey Island is the sixth game in the franchise.

The game revolves around the protagonist—Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate—as he decides to uncover the legendary secret of Monkey Island once and for all. As is traditional for the series, hilarity ensues.

On November 3rd, 2D side-scrolling adventure title Ghost Song will be available on consoles, PC, and the cloud. This is followed by Football Manager 2023 for PC and Football Manager 2023 Console for Xbox, cloud, and PC on November 8th. The critically acclaimed Return to Monkey Island will also be playable on the same day for consoles, cloud and PC.

Vampire Survivors launches on November 10th for consoles, followed by Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment on November 15th for consoles, PC, and cloud, and Somerville for consoles and PC.

Football Manager 2022 on PC and Football Manager 2022 Xbox Edition will leave the service on November 8th. Check out the remaining titles that will be gone on November 15th:

• Art of Rally (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Fae Tactics (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Next Space Rebel (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• One Step from Eden (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Supraland (Cloud, Console, and PC)

According to Stan S. Stanman, it’s the fastest-selling game in the series. While sales figures haven’t been provided, it may be tough to gauge them against previous titles, given the eras in which they were released. Nevertheless, it’s good news for developer Terrible Toybox (though more Monkey Island sequels seem unlikely).

Return to Monkey Island features Guybrush Threepwood as the protagonist, as players explore new and returning islands to discover the Secret of Monkey Island. The point-and-click gameplay of old returns, along with context-sensitive interactions and reactive dialogue trees. There’s even a hint system and Casual Mode for those who just want to enjoy the story. For more details, check out our review here.

Return to Monkey Island released one month ago today and Stan is proud to announce that it's the fastest selling game in the legendary series! pic.twitter.com/Kl8ZU15QYu

— Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) October 19, 2022

Marking the series’ return to the limelight for the first time in years, Return to Monkey Island is a significant milestone- but doubly so, of course, because it also brings back series creator Ron Gilbert into the mix. Alongside series veterans like writer Dave Grossman, voice actors Dominic Armato and Alexandra Boyd, composers Michael Land, Peter McConnell, and Clint Bajakian, and others, Gilbert leads a dream team of returning talent, and with this game, together they prove with stellar results that the charms of Monkey Island truly are timeless. While the franchise has surely delivered some excellent content even in the absence of some of that leading talent – most notably Gilbert himself – Return to Monkey Island feels like a return to form- an authentic experience that tugs the nostalgia bone perfectly, while also ensuring that it doesn’t rely on that one element too much.

"Return to Monkey Island is an authentic experience that tugs the nostalgia bone perfectly, while also ensuring that it doesn’t rely on that one element too much."

Striking a balance between nostalgia and self-sufficient modernity is no easy task, as we’ve seen time and again with franchise revivals across all media more than a few times over the years, but Return to Monkey Island walks that tightrope with confidence. Returning characters, a soundtrack that would feel right at home in the series’ early days, jokes and gags referring to major events and obscure instances from past instalments, and of course, a story that respects the canon- all of this comes together to make you feel like it’s been no time at all since we last saw lovable protagonist Guybrush Threepwood and his cohorts.

At the same time, the game knows that it cannot simply bring over the Monkey Island formula as is and expect it to work in today’s day and age as well as it did in the 90s- and that’s not just because point-and-click adventure games have severely diminished in popularity since then. No, you can be damn sure that if a new adventure title released in 2022 with the same obscure puzzles, complete lack of hand-holding, and moments of frustration where you feel like you’ve been beating your head against a wall for hours, it would bomb spectacularly (not to mention the fact that the internet has made a lot of that thoroughly obsolete).

Return to Monkey Island is well aware of that, and it introduces smart quality-of-life improvements to iron out those kinks. The most fundamental of these is being able to play the game on one of two difficulties, one of which lowers the frequency of puzzles while also making them less challenging. Then there’s the hint book, which will dole out, well, hints that are just vague enough so as not to spell out everything you need to do at any given time, while also being genuinely helpful. These hints are presented to you one after the other- so if you feel that the hint you’re currently looking at is enough to prod you in the right direction, you can choose not to ask for any further help. Of course, for those who want no help whatsoever, the hint book is something that can be ignored entirely.

"Return to Monkey Island’s puzzles are clever and challenging, and they mingle with the game’s humour, writing, and storytelling in consistently excellent ways."

At any time, you can access a to-do list in your inventory, which handily and succinctly lists out your current objectives- and given just how many objectives you’re juggling at any given time more often than not in these games, being able to keep track of them in a simple and effective manner is a huge boost. Finally, the controls, too, have been suitably modernized, and feel organic and easy to use for the most part. Playing on the Switch, I did find using button inputs a little unwieldy for my taste at times- but this is a point-and-click adventure game, of course, and the Switch has a touch screen, so there’s an easy solution to the problem right there that Return to Monkey Island obviously makes use of.

The meat and potatoes of the gameplay experience, as you’d expect, centers entirely around solving puzzles- which takes many forms, from figuring out what items you need, where and how to get them, which of them to combine together, where and when to use them, and often, what order to use them in. As you’d expect, the quality of the puzzles themselves is top-notch. Even with all of the new helpful additions mentioned above, Return to Monkey Island’s puzzles are clever and challenging, and they mingle with the game’s humour, writing, and storytelling in consistently excellent ways. Finally solving a devilishly tricky puzzle remains as immensely satisfying as ever as well. Some puzzle types go get repeated more often than I’d like, and at times there’s a bit too much backtracking involved, but these are minor issues in the grand scheme of things.

And of course, alongside those puzzles, the heart and soul of any Monkey Island game is the story and the way it is told- which is another area where Return to Monkey Island is a rousing success. It serves as a sequel to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, and at its core, it very much plays to the years-long obsession series fans have had over its ambiguous ending and the fabled Secret of Monkey Island, but it also doesn’t retcon games that released afterward. The way it structures its story to do those things and how it makes those two seemingly unmatchable puzzle pieces fit together is consistently impressive.

The writing, meanwhile, is as sharp as a razor’s edge- which is how you know that this is a proper Monkey Island game at its core. The self-referential nostalgia, the chuckle-worthy and heartwarming interactions between series mainstay characters, the laugh-out-loud jokes, the increasingly absurd twists and turns- all of it is pulled off immaculately. Getting humour right is no easy task- it’s an incredibly subjective thing, and stories across all media have fallen flat on their face more than a few times in their attempt to do so. Return to Monkey Island, however, goes about it with a confident ease- not unlike its predecessors.

"Getting humour right is no easy task- it’s an incredibly subjective thing, and stories across all media have fallen flat on their face more than a few times in their attempt to do so. Return to Monkey Island, however, goes about it with a confident ease."

The game’s art style bears mentioning as well. Unfortunately, it’s been something of a topic of controversy in the lead-up to Return’s launch, and not everybody has reacted to the new look kindly, given how radically different it looks from the older games. But it works. This is a gorgeous game with a vibrant, colourful, and eye-popping aesthetic, and everything from the detailed environments to the characters and how they animate to even the items in your inventory are beautiful to look at, and – much like the rest of the game – brimming with charm and personality.

Given how easy it was for Return to Monkey Island to go disastrously wrong, it would very honestly be tempting to call it nothing short of a miracle that it is as amazing as it is- but honestly, that would be doing a disservice to Ron Gilbert and the team he’s assembled, and the incredible work and passion they’ve put on display here. They have all come together to deliver what mostly felt truly impossible at this point in time: a true, new, modern Monkey Island game, one that is so convincing at recreating the heights of the series’ heyday, it feels like that heyday never ended.

This game was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch.

Announced back in April, Return to Monkey Island also marks the return of one of the franchise’s creators, Ron Gilbert. It is worth noting that Return to Monkey Island seems to largely ignore the events of Curse of Monkey Island, Escape From Monkey Island, and Tales of Monkey Island. Rather, the game opts to pick up where Ron Gilbert left the franchise off with the (confusing) ending to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge.

Gilbert has however also stated that the game will be careful in how it handles the series’ continuity, so it is possible that we might see some mention of the events from the third, fourth, and fifth games in the series.

The series features several returning names in development, including Dave Grossman returning to co-write the story, and Dominic Armato returning to lend his voice to protagonist Guybrush Threepwood.

Back in June, the official website for Return to Monkey Island indicated that the latest entry would also be the final game in the Monkey Island series.