Day of the Tentacle

Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle follows the point-and-click two-dimensional adventure game formula, first established by the original Maniac Mansion. Players direct the controllable characters around the game world by clicking with the computer mouse. To interact with the game world, players choose from a set of commands arrayed on the screen and then on an object in the world. This was the last SCUMM game to use the original interface of having the bottom half of the screen taken up by a verb selection and inventory; starting with the next game to use the SCUMM engine, Sam & Max Hit the Road, the engine was modified to scroll through a more concise list of verbs with the right mouse button and to have a separate screen for the inventory. This formula carried on to later games by LucasArts, such as The Dig, Full Throttle and The Curse of Monkey Island. In Day of the Tentacle, the player can switch between any one of the three playable characters at any time, though two of the characters must first be unlocked by the completion of certain puzzles. The three protagonists can also share inventory items between themselves (at least, those items that can be stowed in a toilet), a feature that plays into many of the game's puzzles.

In Maniac Mansion, the playable characters can be killed by various sequences of events. LucasArts adopted a different philosophy towards its adventure games in 1990, beginning with The Secret of Monkey Island. Their philosophy was that the game should not punish the player for exploring the game world. Accordingly, in most of the adventure games released by LucasArts after Monkey Island, including Day of the Tentacle, the player character(s) cannot die.