Tentacular [Quest 2] | REVIEW

Tentacular has one of the most awesome premises that I’ve ever seen in a video game. Players take on the role of a giant octopus who finds out that he was adopted (his HUMAN sister had to break this news) on his sixteenth birthday, and to make matters worse, he has to get a job in order to keep the inhabitants of his home island of La Kalma off his back. This means wagging around your tentacles in wacky virtual reality action, with this poor mollusc not particularly useful at… well… anything.

Sounds nuts, right? Well, it’s also a whole lot of fun, with the zany escapade one of the most charming titles that I’ve played in my Quest 2 headset.

Check out a gallery of screenshots down below:

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The core gameplay experience of Tentacular revolves around using your tentacles to perform a myriad of tasks around each locale, with players able to grab at just about anything around them. See a building in front of you? You can probably lift up the roof to see what’s inside. Does something need moving? Great, just grab it and *carefully* place it where it needs to be. Pedestrian annoying you? Pick him up and launch him into the sea. There’s something undeniably satisfying about being able to effectively stick your tentacles to any object around you, but NOTHING feels more joyous than then lobbing it into the distance. It’s one of those things that you’ve got to do yourself to fully appreciate.

In many ways the objectives you’re given in-game are pretty straight forward, so it’s rarely difficult to work out what to do. The NPCs will chat with you via cute little speech bubbles too, with each giving you guidance to the task at hand or progressing the story forward. However, actually completing these tasks is a bit more fiddly, with players having to carefully grab and manipulate objects in order to use them. Whilst you might be tasked with something as simple as putting a certain object in a specific place, using tentacles to do so can be extremely clumsy – not in a way that deters the gameplay, but in a comical manner that often sees you causing destruction as you try to complete your task.

The whole system is complemented by the fact that Tentacular has a realistic sense of intricacy with your actions. You’ll have to get a tight grip of objects with your tentacles if you want to hold them properly for example, with simply tapping it with the end of your tentacle often not enough to keep them held properly. You can’t slam them around carefree either, because they’ll wipe out anything in their path. Again, these aren’t bad things, but instead make Tentacular all the more enjoyable to play and mean players have to be both careful and precise with their actions. Or you can just cause mayhem and laugh about it, it’s up to you.

“There’s something undeniably satisfying about being able to effectively stick your tentacles to any object around you, but NOTHING feels more joyous than then lobbing it into the distance.”

Ultimately, it’s all about physics-based puzzling that never get too complicated, but everything works really well within the wacky world of Tentacular. It’s more about building structures out of items as opposed to using your tentacles to cause destruction, but it’s always fun and packs in plenty of quirky charm that ensures nothing ever gets boring. Different elements are introduced to spice things up along the way, whether that’s using magnets to stack objects, blasting things into the air with rockets, or catching objects being launched at you, so there’s always something different to do that ensures the puzzle design never grows stale. You might be limited to using your tentacles for the most part, but it’s surprising just how creative you can be with them.

Everything feels great in virtual reality, both with the motion controls that are easy to perform (just pretend your arms are tentacles) and the comfortable setup that ensures Tentacular is never too rough for players who don’t have their virtual reality bearings yet. There is a bit of free movement in the game, but it’s never unbearable given the fact that you’re a massive octopus in a typically small landscape where most things are in reach. The only real issue I had with the controls came with the puzzles that demanded players throw objects, with a lack of distinction of your accuracy and power on offer when launching things around – it’s something owed to the lack of weightiness with the controls and the fact that you’re using a tentacle. It doesn’t make the game too difficult, but there were a few moments where I struggled to figure out how best to line up my throws.

“Different elements are introduced to spice things up along the way, whether that’s using magnets to stack objects, blasting things into the air with rockets, or catching objects being launched at you, so there’s always something different to do that ensures the puzzle design never grows stale.”

It’ll only take a few hours to beat Tentacular, but it’s long enough that it stays fun without running out of ideas. There wasn’t a single puzzle in the game that wasn’t fun to complete or that felt like padding, whilst there’s even some side tasks to complete or additional exploration to be done if you really want to take in everything the game has to offer. La Kalma is a pretty little place to check out you know, and whilst Tentacular might not be the most visually impressive game on the Quest 2, there’s something blissful about being a part of its lovely little world (especially since you feel so massive in it).

Developer: Firepunchd Games
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platform(s): Quest 2 (Reviewed), PC VR
Website: https://www.devolverdigital.com/games/tentacular