Tentacular Hands-on Preview – Shut up and take my money!

Posted on March 12, 2022

Ever felt like a squid out of water? Tentacular plunges you into the ocean-dwelling hulk of a gigantic, kind-hearted tentacled beast trying to figure out its place in the world.

Raised among humans on the bustling and eccentric island of La Kalma, the time has finally come to unravel the secrets of your mysterious origin while working as the world’s strongest handyman. Help your human friends to research a strange and an incredibly powerful energy source through a colossal collection of action-based activities and constructions puzzles, using your titanic tentacles to aid your quest for answers and unlock elements for your very own playground in the creative sandbox mode.

We had the chance to get our hands on the upcoming silly VR title from Devolver Digital. Get your suckers ready!

For those who know me, you won’t be surprised in the slightest to see me want to get my greedy mits on a game named ‘Tentacular’. For the rest of you, it’s simple. I have a very “healthy” obsession with tentacles and am very proud to be able to share their majesty with the world, in a strictly PG space of course. I swear the team over at Firepunchd Games reached into my wildest dreams and built this game just for me. So with eager anticipation I jumped into the VR space and began my transformation into… well… a giant tentacled lady?

You see it isn’t entirely clear what manner of being you are, except that you are massive, tower over the villagers, and have 2 tentacled appendages to control. The art style is incredibly endearing and the towns people remind me a lot of wooden dolls, bopping and toddling as they go about their business. The perspective of being huge makes the town seem like a dollhouse with you as the supreme overlord.

“…a congressmen complained about atrocities I had committed, to which I responded with throwing them into the sea.”

So naturally I played house and had immense fun ignoring the chit chatter of the villagers and made my own fun; making the cars crash, exploding things and rearranging the village to however I saw fit. Honestly, there didn’t even need to be a story. Just having this world to play in is fun enough!

My wife came home to me laughing maniacally as congressmen complained about atrocities I had committed, to which I responded with throwing them into the sea. Take that you little stinkers! Nobody messes with tentacle lady! But I digress…

There is a story and actual gameplay in Tentacular though, and it is cute as heck. All we know is that it is my 16th birthday and the young girl talking to me says I need to get a job and something about being adopted?

To find your perfect job though, the villagers need you to perform tests in order to find which job we would suit best. This is where the gameplay objectives come in. Stacking blocks in specific orientations, throwing objects into specified areas, slingshotting storage containers to blow up buildings. You know, the usual kind of tests. The tasks aren’t overly complicated and are easy to grasp, however, manipulating objects without thumbs but instead with lengths of suckers can prove to make the simplistic of tasks, well, quite difficult. As the suction function is either on or off, and you have suckers all down your tentacled appendage, so sometimes you have to be more delicate with your tentacle placement. This makes complete sense if you have tentacles; I wouldn’t expect you fleshy folk to understand.

With the time I spent with Tentacular, it is looking to become something new and exciting in the VR space. With the current selection of experiences and games available today still finding their footing, it is great to see something both interesting and inventive come to the table.

With any VR game though, there is always a very delicate balance of getting the gameplay just right so you don’t literally make your players sick; which is what happened to me. It wasn’t pleasant, being hit with a ‘VR hangover’ for 2 days, which is apparently a real thing I found out thanks to Dr. Google.

The manipulation and physical components of the gameplay is perfect, however, the game wants you to move around as well, and that is where the wheels fall off a little. Those inclined toward motion sickness might need to stay away from this one, so it could be more suited to those who already have their “VR legs”. I hope that there are plans to refine the movement or even remove it altogether, as I can see the game still functioning without it. Don’t keep me from living my tentacle dreams Firepunchd Games UG! I’ve waited so long and had so much fun with the little preview that I had.

Tentacular is set to release the kraken in Spring 2022!