At the risk of looking weird, the Thrillville games (moreso Off The Rails, to some extent) have been something of a hyperfixation of mine. For the past few months I've been scouring the internet, playing the games themselves, and analyzing gameplay footage in an attempt to find as many bits of information I can, but there appears very little in-depth info out there. Even the wiki currently has only 170 pages. And so my search has lead me to this site.
I'll say right now that I don't really care much about the theme park aspect of it. The only time I ever actually go to the story mode is to talk to guests so I can get funny dialogue options. What I'm interested in are the minigames. Especially in T:OTR, there's such a wide variety of genres; there's FPS, a Beat 'Em Up, racing games, Top-Down Shooters, a Metroidvania, puzzle games, and I think a few others. I love the characters, and the few games that have some story to them are interesting. The thing about that, though, is that the stories are way underdeveloped. For example, in the entire Sparkle quadrilogy (i.e. Sparkle Island Classic, Sparkle Island 2, Sparkle Quest, and Sparkle Pop), there are only five characters whose names are mentioned - and none of them are playable! It tries to make a huge point that Usagi-san is supposed to be the mascot of the series, but he only has six lines of dialogue in Sparkle Quest, and they don't even explain what his motives are, nor do the final cutscenes. What's more, not very many questions can be answered just by playing the games; what are the playable characters called? Why did Usagi-san build the robot? How do the player characters and NPCs know who he is? Where do their powers come from?
These are the kinds of questions I have for most of the games in Thrillville. With the Sparkle Quest example I gave, it may be the case that, with it being a Metroidvania, that they wanted to make the characterization more or less a blank slate so that the player can come up with their own stories as they play. I can't come to such a conclusion with the other minigames, though. I've looked through every post on this site that comes up when I search "Thrillville", and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Who do I have to message/mail/etc. to get the information that I want? I'm relatively certain that there's at least one person out there who is able to give me some info. (btw I've seen nothing in the rules that disallows posts like this, so please inform me if I've missed anything.)
I'll say right now that I don't really care much about the theme park aspect of it. The only time I ever actually go to the story mode is to talk to guests so I can get funny dialogue options. What I'm interested in are the minigames. Especially in T:OTR, there's such a wide variety of genres; there's FPS, a Beat 'Em Up, racing games, Top-Down Shooters, a Metroidvania, puzzle games, and I think a few others. I love the characters, and the few games that have some story to them are interesting. The thing about that, though, is that the stories are way underdeveloped. For example, in the entire Sparkle quadrilogy (i.e. Sparkle Island Classic, Sparkle Island 2, Sparkle Quest, and Sparkle Pop), there are only five characters whose names are mentioned - and none of them are playable! It tries to make a huge point that Usagi-san is supposed to be the mascot of the series, but he only has six lines of dialogue in Sparkle Quest, and they don't even explain what his motives are, nor do the final cutscenes. What's more, not very many questions can be answered just by playing the games; what are the playable characters called? Why did Usagi-san build the robot? How do the player characters and NPCs know who he is? Where do their powers come from?
These are the kinds of questions I have for most of the games in Thrillville. With the Sparkle Quest example I gave, it may be the case that, with it being a Metroidvania, that they wanted to make the characterization more or less a blank slate so that the player can come up with their own stories as they play. I can't come to such a conclusion with the other minigames, though. I've looked through every post on this site that comes up when I search "Thrillville", and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Who do I have to message/mail/etc. to get the information that I want? I'm relatively certain that there's at least one person out there who is able to give me some info. (btw I've seen nothing in the rules that disallows posts like this, so please inform me if I've missed anything.)