Treasures from the Tickle Trunk: Day of the Tentacle

This article is part of a new series of articles that I call “Treasures from the Tickle Trunk” where I pull a game from my basement game library and take a deeper look at what it achieves. This style of article is deeply influenced by Corvus’s Narrative of the Moment series.

As I played through the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures this morning, I kept reminding myself that writing comedy is difficult - and writing interactive comedy well is nigh impossible. Not only is quick wit, rich satire, and goofy slapstick necessary, but it has to be reflected in gameplay in such a way as to play funny. With so few adventure games, and even fewer games with a sense of humor, I thought I would take a fresh look at one of the bright highlights of gaming humor in the 90s - Day of the Tentacle.

Drawing upon the strange, quirky, world of its predecessor, Maniac Mansion, the first minute of DoTT sets the tone for the rest of the game. The game is an excellent example of how every element of a game can be integrated into a holistic theme.

Visual Art

The most striking aspect of DoTT is the bizarre and striking artwork found throughout the game. If you’re familiar with the German Expressionist film movement, you may recognize the kinship between the artistic style of DoTT and films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Instead of the generic 2D perspective view common to most adventure games of that era, the backgrounds are lavishly painted in a tilted, helter-skelter fashion: walls curve into one another, objects lean at impossible angles, characters are illustrated as distorted figures. Unlike German Expressionism however, DoTT combines this illustrative style with a saturated palette of bright purples, greens, and blues.  The artwork, both foreground and background, shrieks of goofy and lighthearted yet sincere zaniness. The game is similarly animated: Bernard struts around with his pants pulled up to his chest and feet far in front of him, Laverne’s neck stretches to impossible lengths in the introduction, and Dr. Fred wrings his hands outrageously in every scene. Nothing in the game is unembellished, and most things are exaggerated to a ridiculous degree.

Music and Sound

Although less exaggerated than the visual art, the music still retains the goofiness of the game. Thanks to the iMUSE system, every piece of music in the game is synchronized and arranged on the fly according to the mood of the scene or specific event. In terms of musical style the game relies upon wind instruments throughout; very few percussion and string instrument pieces are found. The wind instruments - mostly flutes, clarinets, and tubas - give the game a light atmosphere punctuated by the occasional slapstick tuba honk. Although less aggressive in its strength, the music is in many ways reminiscent of the Looney Tunes cartoon musical scores - every scene is arranged to fit the particular scene. In scenes where the character is surprised by something, we are greeted with the familiar and hackneyed da-da-daaaaah! of daytime soap operas or B-grade horror flicks that only serves to make the scene even more outrageous and fun.

The sounds in the game accomplish the same feat: Bernard picking his ear wax makes the sound of two balloons squishing against each other, picking up objects gives the player a yoink! or swipe! feedback sound; the introduction to the game gives a good overall survey of the theme. But unlike the great majority of games that rely upon the same kinds of sound libraries, the most cliched sound effects are put to perfect use in this game because they are so overused and ridiculous. 

The characters in the game are not only voiced convincingly, but the voices always suit their character illustrations in uncanny ways. Bernard is voiced by the somewhat unknown, but excellent, Richard Sanders who played ‘Les Nessman’ on the American sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Bernard’s voice is so thickly nerdy that at times Sanders manages to capture in his acting what I think is the quintessential nerd: long periods of whining interrupted by brief, pathetic, moments of bravery.

Story/Narrative

What could be more bizarre than a twisted Scooby Doo troupe bumbling their way through a search for a crazed purple tentacle bent on taking over the world? Apparently this: by sending them all through portable toilets fashioned into time machines to the past, only to have them end up in different time periods because the crazy professor was too cheap to pay for a real diamond to power the Chron-O-Johns!

Hoagie is trapped in pre-confederation America, Bernard in the present, and Laverne in a disturbing purple-tentacle-controlled mockery of the future. By satirizing each period the game does an admirable job of presenting its own twisted look at history: Hoagie for instance spends his time interacting with American colonialists like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock, each of which are thickly stylized personalities. Although the characters are lampooned mercilessly, they all manage to retain their signature styles and contribute to a hilarious and surprisingly educational American conferedation history lesson.

In truth the story theme is itself nothing new (mad scientific experiment goes wrong, threatens world, kids save world), but what makes it so compelling is the sheer oddity of the characters and world, and the sense of humor they constitute together. The story is one long schtick that always stays safely on the side of witty and good-natured, and never makes excursions into senseless violence or needless sarcasm. Because the story and gameplay are so well integrated with one another, both compel the player to keep playing.

Gameplay

As I mentioned in the introduction, finding ways of making gameplay goofy often borders on impossible. Because games depend upon repeatable, predictable, and logical rule systems, making games that operate on a twisted logic and play well is rare. Although DoTT does nothing new in terms of its inventory system and point’n'click verb interface, both are put to new uses thanks to an interesting world and puzzles. Instead of commanding just one protagonist, the player can switch between three protagonists throughout the game: Bernard, Laverne, and Hoagie. Each character has their own distinct personality and will or will not do certain kinds of tasks - Hoagie is hideously lazy, Laverne is not altogether bright, and Bernard is downright clumsy. Since each character is trapped in a different time period, certain puzzles can only be completed by “flushing” items down the Chron-O-John to another time period. Many items are combinable and often in strange and bizarre ways, which many times left me baffled as to how to complete the puzzle. However that is not to say that the puzzles are irrational - the player must simply learn to immerse her/himself in the wacky logic of DoTT. For instance, a great amount of the game is spent changing things in one time period in order to effect changes in future periods; the game does an admirable job of making the most seemingly insignificant change in one period change the entire game. As Chris Remo of Adventure Gamers puts it, “Indeed, the story of the game and the gameplay itself are deftly intertwined. Almost without exception, the puzzles tie directly into the plot, rather than existing on a separate plane.”

Conclusion

Although this game has been reviewed a countless number of times, given the recent releases of Penny Arcade Adventures and Telltale’s Sam and Max episodes, I felt it was important to remind myself that the humor in these games was eclipsed over 10 years ago by a true modern adventure-humor classic. I could have written this same article about Sam and Max Hit the Road (which has a completely different style of humor) but I felt that Day of the Tentacle is unmatched in its synthesis of humor, story, and world. Game designers and writers do not need to write or design anything funny - they need to make worlds and characters that in themselves are compelling and hilarious - the jokes come as a natural consequence of that after the fact.

Thanks to the excellent ScummVM project, you can play Day of the Tentacle in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. I highly recommend playing the CD “talkie” version with full voiceovers.