Tentacles: Enter the Mind (Win 8)

The game is enjoyable to complete & offers a wide variety of challenges . . .

As I was looking for a game to play on my Windows 8.1 laptop, I stumbled upon Tentacles: Enter the Mind on the Windows Store. Available worldwide since August 2014, this 3D action game is the sequel of Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin, and like its predecessor, it was developed by Press Play, a Danish company acquired by Microsoft back in 2012. Looking at the colorful screenshots featuring cute (but probably dangerous) enemies, it reminded me a bit of Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, a game that I had some fun with on XBLA. Tentacles: ETM only took 60MB of space; and cherry on top, it happened to be free, so it was definitely time to give it a try.

The first episode starred Lemmy, a strange entity with four tentacles and one big eye that was accidentally stuck inside the body of Dr. Phluff, a mad scientist obsessed with cuteness (the reason why he has a dolphin head). You still play as the same character in Enter the Mind, and once again, you are inside Dr. Phluff; but this time, it is his twisted mind that you will have to clean. This will result in Lemmy exploring layers that all represent different psychological aspects of his personality, like the Ego, the Phobia and the Libido - but also some of his negative feelings, for instance the shame, the guilt and the regrets, in order to restore his mental health. Do not rely on the soothing music that accompanies you throughout the game: tidying up Dr. Phluff’s craziness will definitely not be an easy task.

The most striking difference with Enter the Dolphin is that the environments are now in 3D, and you can explore them freely (but you cannot rotate the camera, unfortunately). As to the gameplay itself, it is still very simple to understand: Lemmy’s tentacles can be used to grab some elements in the setting like walls, rocks, or more exotic things such as striped pillows or rubber ducks. By tapping the screen (on a touch-screen device) or by moving the mouse and clicking, the hero progresses through different phases and eventually reaches the exit of the level (symbolized by a brain you have to jump into). On the way, you will obviously face some traps (spikes, oscillators, seas of lava) as well as a lot of enemies: kamikaze or three-eyed fishes charging at you, blobs, spitting aliens… Very different creatures which have one thing in common: they can all be defeated by aiming and ripping out their eye(s) with the tentacles.

These eyes can restore a bit of your health if you are injured, but more importantly, you will need a certain amount of them in order to get to the next layer. In other words: if you do not have enough eyes in your possession once you reach the brain, you keep your hard-earned loot but you will have to make another run until you own the required number. Getting through the first layer only demands 30 eyes, which is very easy to attain; but as you make it to the most advanced layers, you will need more and more eyes and several runs will be necessary in order to kill enough enemies. If the player dies during one of these tries, he has two options: use a revive token and continue, or retry from the beginning of the layer and thus lose his progress.

In order to help you overcome the numerous obstacles on the way, your character can be equipped with better gear: the body, the eye, the tentacles and the trail can all be upgraded in the store, giving a lot of different advantages (extra hearts, coin multipliers, better shooting range…). Throughout the levels, you will find two ways to obtain them: collect enough coins and simply pay the price, or gather eggs of different colors - from white to black depending on their rarity - that appear randomly on the field. Once an egg is collected, find or buy a hammer of the same color and you will be able to crack it, which will net you some coins, a revive token, or a random piece of gear. It is definitely an interesting feature which entices the player to explore the levels with the hope of being lucky and getting a very rare item. You will also gradually get three upgradable powers (shield, bomb and berzerker) that prove to be very useful in the last levels, usually filled with strong, numerous and very aggressive foes.

Another thing I found to be very pleasant in Tentacles: ETM is that, unlike a lot of free games, it does give you the option to buy some coins with actual money, but at no time you will have a feeling that the game forces you to do so. It is easy to collect a lot of coins with a good multiplier buff, and revive tokens can be found quite often – or if you are out of luck, you can just buy them. Some decent gear is affordable very early in the game, and the most expensive pieces are not that great anyway – in the sense that they do not make a big difference gameplay-wise. This way the player is free to reward the developers for their work if he liked the game, but if he decides not to, he will never have to deal with some endless grind or unmanageable situations.

Achievement-wise, the game is enjoyable to complete and offers a wide variety of challenges. Most of the twenty achievements are situational and/or will be unlocked through natural progression; you will have plenty of opportunities to fulfill their requirements (go through the hole of a knife, grab three ducks simultaneously, kill five enemies with one bomb…) and none of them are missable. Eight is Great (reach a 8x multiplier) and Times Ten (reach a 10x multiplier) may seem very challenging at first, but you can actually start a level with a 12x multiplier if you equip the adequate pieces of gear and buffs. The hardest achievement is very likely Bullfighter: the Rammstein is a very rare creature that randomly appears in the most advanced layers of the game and it is often accompanied by other enemies, so find and kill one without using any powers definitely requires patience, luck and a bit of skill. You could also have trouble finding and cracking a black egg, since they appear randomly; as far as I am concerned I found two of them during my playthrough, but you might be unlucky.

Again so sorry for the detailed review. Thank you.
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