It's been a tough few months for Xbox, with waves of layoffs, studio closures, and the prospect of outrageously expensive next-gen hardware looming. But Xbox Game Pass continues to chug along, welcoming a wave of new games twice a month while bidding farewell to other titles in the library. There's one classic title leaving the service on Oct. 31 that you won't want to miss — and it's a short game that's a perfect fit for spooky season: 2016's Day of the Tentacle Remastered.
Originally released back in 1993 by LucasArts, Day of the Tentacle is a wildly influential point-and-click adventure game known for its use of the SCUMM game engine. It allows players to choose from a set of commands at the bottom of the screen — such as "pick up," "talk to," and "use" — and then interact with an object in the world. Double Fine secured the rights to the game from LucasArts after the enthusiastic response to another collaboration between the two studios, 2015's Grim Fandango Remastered (which also leaves Game Pass at the end of the month).
In Day of the Tentacle, you control a pocket-protector-wearing nerd called Bernard and his friends, Hoagie and Laverne, as they try to stop the mutated Purple Tentacle from taking over the world. There's just one problem: Purple Tentacle's nefarious plan for global domination is quite literally perfect, so the only way to truly thwart him is by using time travel. The friendly neighborhood mad scientist Dr.
Fred allows you to use his porta-potty time machines, but it all goes terribly wrong. Hoagie is sent 200 years in the past, to the time of America's founding fathers. Laverne ends up 200 years in the future, after Purple Tentacle has enslaved all of humanity.
Meanwhile, Bernard's stuck in the present. The three pals must work together to gather and send one another various items through the time toilet in order to prevent the tentacle's takeover. If you're a point-and-click superfan, Day of the Tentacle Remastered is effectively a two-for-one deal — the remaster also includes a fully playable version of LucasArts' 1987 game Maniac Mansion, another wildly influential adventure game that marked the first-ever use of the SCUMM game engine.
After seven years under the Xbox umbrella, Double Fine went independent again in July, so it's not surprising to see the studio's games are leaving the Game Pass library. Day of the Tentacle Remastered will only take you about five or six hours to beat, so there's plenty of time before Oct. 31 for you to check it out. It's a goofy '90s time capsule with plenty of clever puzzles and off-the-wall narrative twists.
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