Day of the tentacle is both very funny and well thought out. The game essentially takes place in the same location throughout: a large house. But because the three friends are stuck in time (one in the past, one in the future), you can freely jump around between three iterations of the same house, each iteration vastly different.
With the addition of a time machine for you inventory items, you can send (most) things back and forth through time to a different character in order to solve puzzles. This layout and this inventory time travel mechanic creates an incredibly dense, thoughtful game that challenges you without ever feeling overwhelming.
Games with larger, nonlinear areas can often feel overwhelming because you don’t know where you’re supposed to go, or whether you’ve exhausted all of your exploration options. For example in Grim Fandango I was stuck for a long time simply because I didn’t know there was a lighthouse I could go to, as the path to the lighthouse was not obvious. In DoTT, however, since the house structure is basically the same within each time period, you’re given a set number of rooms to explore, with very concrete problems to solve, and it’s just up to you to solve them. You should never feel like there are rooms or areas you haven’t found.
The puzzles are also very clever and goofy without being too illogical or ridiculous. There were occasional spots where I didn’t know what to do next, but I was always able to overcome with just a bit of time to think. You’ll often need to switch back and forth between your characters to think about your inventory and where those items could be useful.
The game is funny, and the interactions of the items with other characters or things are often entertaining to observe as well as a way to gain useful knowledge about what an item might do for you in game. For example (light spoiler) you have a green textbook in your inventory at the start of the game. I let it sit there without doing anything with it for a long time, until I was slightly stuck later on, so I tried to give the book to someone for them to read. I thought, hey maybe they’ll want to read this textbook. My character then proceeded to read the book out loud to the other character, and the character told me to stop or he’d fall asleep. This gave me an “aha” moment, as there happened to be another character in a different location that I needed to make fall asleep.
Anyway I’m rambling. The game is fantastic. It’s dense, it’s smart, it’s hilarious. Remastered update looks amazing, and I just really can’t complain about any of it.
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