Last summer, Thimbleweed Park co-creator Ron Gilbert invited fans to suggest titles for the nearly 300 books in the game's Occult Bookstore. “I'm a big fan of the Tom Sawyer school of game design. Why paint that fence if you can get all your friends to paint it for you, or in this case, name all those books?” he said at the time. Smart thinking, and apparently it worked out pretty well, because he's doing it again—but this time, you actually get to write a little story.
Gilbert is seeking help with the books in the mansion's library, which will have both titles and small chunks of text. “When the player explores the mansion library, they can look at any of the books and they'll get a close up showing two side-by-side pages. Players can't turn the pages, but the two pages can be from anywhere in the book,” he explained. "Some of the books will be written by us and include background lore for the story and characters, but we also need books that are just fun to read and explore.”
For those non-lore books, he's seeking contributions from fans. Submissions require a book title and author (and yes, you can use your own name), and two pages of text of about 100 words each. It must be an original work, appropriate for the era—the game is set in 1987, so no smartphones or Twitter—and rated PG-13 at the max. Other than that, you can let you imagination run wild. If your entry is used in the game, you'll be named in the credits.
Entries must be made using this Google form, and the deadline is August 29. As for Thimbleweed Park itself, it's been delayed a little bit: It was originally expected to be ready for release this year, but Gilbert said in a May blog post that the launch had been pushed into January 2017; it's now listed as the slightly-less-specific “early 2017.”
