Reviews

Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle

Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle is a third-person point-n’-click adventure game released by Lucas Arts in 1993. Unlike its predecessor Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle was led by project managers Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, instead of Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. The latter duo that worked on Day of the Tentacle added a cartoonish twist to the game, like a zany spin on the themes that the game Maniac Mansion introduced to us in 1987.

This is a challenging game to say the least, more challenging than the previous adventure game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which was released in 1992 by Lucas Arts. Don’t get me wrong, it took my sister and I two years to beat Fate of Atlantis without the Internet or hint lines during our childhood. What sets Day of the Tentacle apart from Fate of Atlantis, as I have stated earlier in this review, is its cartoonish logic. The artists involved in the sprite design of Bernard Bernoulli, the leading character in this game, and his friends Hoagie and Laverne, reflect the aspect of comic strip characters. The plot designers also really focused on the most tangential and off-the-wall script to coalesce into this whole undertaking of a frustrated gamer playing through with a lot of stops and starts.

There are many ways to play this game: emulator, original hardware, and Steam, where you will find the remastered version from Double Fine, a company led by Tim Schafer, who bought the rights for Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle from Disney. As you may imagine, this is a difficult feat, as Disney bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2013 when Lucas Arts went defunct. So, if you find this review helpful, give Day of the Tentacle a shot on whichever platform you please. Thank you for reading.