Army of Tentacles: A Parody that Tries Too Hard

Game: Army of Tentacles: (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim
Platform: PC
Genre: visual novel, turn-based RPG, parody
Style: directly based on Lovecraft’s work (parody)
Verdict: Not Recommended

Parodies can be fantastic. I love Cthulhu Saves the World, which comes across as a heartfelt and hilarious homage while poking fun at Lovecraft’s work and RPGs.

I can’t say the same for Army of Tentacles.

Army of Tentacles: (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim is… not a Cthulhu dating sim (although it eventually received DLC that is), so my only guess is that the title is a joke about how people mistake all visual novels for dating sims.

It’s partly a visual novel and partly an RPG. You play Perry, a human-appearing child of a Deep One who is preparing to help the Deep Ones invade the town of Innsmouth and overthrow its monster-hating mayor.

You visit several locations, where you can take on quests and meet new characters as you build up an army for the invasion.

It has an interesting take on combat. Unlike a standard turn-based combat system, it focuses on dialogue. Basically, you need to pick the right responses to damage your opponent and avoid damage. It’s an entertaining concept, although these choices range from correctly identifying Shakespeare quotes to answering trivia about dragons. Since you can only take a few hits, you’ll eventually run into trouble (and probably look up the answers), although your party members have abilities to help out.

And of course, all of these encounters tie back to the Deep One invasion, with plenty of characters you’ll recognize from Lovecraft’s stories.

The problem is that humor is subjective.

A parody lives or dies by its humor, and for me, Army of Tentacles came across like it was trying too hard. It had moments of humor, and a few times where the story became interesting, but each of these moments was overshadowed by a barrage of jokes, as if the game was afraid the player might forget it was a parody.

At one point, I encountered a character who merely shouted, “Fillerquest!” at me repeatedly before the quest was marked complete. At another point, the narrator explained a tutorial while Perry shouted at him to go away.

Rather than funny moments of self-awareness to pay tribute to the genre, I felt like I couldn’t go more than a few lines of dialogue without Army of Tentacles nudging me to say “That was a joke about video games! Look how funny and self-aware I am!”

The basic premise of building up your army and recruiting allies for the invasion is a good one, and presenting Dagon and the others as the more-or-less heroes struggling against reactionary humans has potential… but unfortunately, the execution didn’t quite do it for me.

Again, humor is subjective. If you look through the screenshots and examples presented here and laugh, Army of Tentacles: (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim might be a game you’d enjoy.

As for me, however, I don’t think I’ll be spending any more time in this version of Innsmouth, let alone getting the DLC for the New Game+.