(Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim
, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, is about a boy/girl named Perry Hollycraft that is totally going to destroy humanity. And by humanity, we mean the small coastal town of Innsmouth, New England.
The Search for Army of Tentacles 2 takes place in a post-apocalypse that came too early, and Perry is tasked with finding out which of the Old Gods jumped the gun and caused it while they're all trying to take advantage of the situation.
Lastly, (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim 2 is an Interquel that takes place between the two previous titles. Instead of Perry, the main protagonist is a Great Old One...or, rather, an outcast named Molly whose "B Squad" of misfits wants to prove their worth after being denied from participating in the Battle of Innsmouth.
Also of note is a spin-off title, Mythos Ever After: A Cthulhu Dating Sim, released in October 2020. Taking place between the first two games, it's an actual dating sim that takes place in the Dreamlands' premiere university, which is attended and staffed by the progeny of monsters, elder gods, and warrior-mages. A brief sequel to it, Mythos Ever After RX, was released in 2021.
An additional spin-off, Tentacle Prawn: (Actually) A Cthulhu Dating Sim, released in May 2023. It is a culmination of the original trilogy that also acts as a stand-alone title, as well as a crossover with Stegalosaurus Games' Paper Shakespeare series. It stars a teenage Great Old One adapting to a world where humanity survived their apocalypse and now coexists with them, leading to an influx of new transfer students from a Shakespeare Liberal Arts college to their premiere university right before Winter Prom.
Yet another game is currently in production: Army of Tentacles: Assault on Rainbow Unicorn Island; to quote its store page directly, it is "In no way related to the other Army of Tentacles games where the characters have the same exact names. What would make you think that?"
Tropes present throughout the Army of Tentacles series:
- Artificial Limbs: The Innsmouth police sheriff, G.D. Choder, has a robotic right arm. He also looks much younger then the officers under his command, and unlike them he also wears no uniform and is dressed in basic jeans, shirt and cap instead. Then again, his officers wear stereotypical British uniforms and bobby helmets anyway.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Perry is thankfully unvoiced, but every other character has voice acting that is at best bad on purpose.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: One of the selling points, as indicated by the very title.
- Extra Eyes: The sequel's Zo-Kalar has 11 eyes in total - 9 in 3 vertical rows of 3, and two more in an additional row.
- Fox Folk: There's a friendly, if shy, girl student with fox ears and tail. Her surname is Thatcher.
- Horny Vikings: The sequel's so-called Earth Knights wear a modern attempt to match knightly armor, complete with bright industrial paint colors, rivets everywhere and comically branching antlers that look neither sharp nor intimidating.
- Lighter and Softer: When it comes to the Lovecraft-inspired fiction, this is all the way down with Cthulhu Saves the World in terms of its irreverence, and possibly even more so.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The original has an encounter with an "Olympic Velociraptor Bobsled Team". The sequel has a Shoggoth Stormtrooper - a supposedly formless horror had somehow been fully covered by skin-tight white armor.
- No Fourth Wall: Invoked. For instance, the tutorial for the first battle in the series explains that you need to either agree with the opponent's word or rebuke them, and then explains at length the meaning of "rebuke", only for Perry to cut it off with "I am not an idiot. I know what rebuke means."
- One-Way Visor: Shoggoth Stormtrooper in the sequel is fully encased in a futuristic white armor that comes complete with a reflective pink visor.
- Punny Name: Drunken Davy Jones' Locker sees Perry encounter Pvt. (Private) Parts.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Perry's gender changes nothing about the story.
- Rule of Funny: The games pretty much try to run on this.
- Stylistic Suck: The games gleefully break just about every rule of graphic design and composition, easily matching pieces of default, high-definition graphics with real-world photos or their own cel-shaded art, which is often basic to say the least. For instance, the original game opens with a highly questionable drawing of "Walter Hollycraft" narrating the story, set to a backdrop of a photo of a real-world bay. The sequel has an encounter where Perry comes across mere black-and-white outlines of two gnomes with flamethrowers amidst reasonably realistically drawn ruins.
- Un-Installment: Super Army of Tentacles 3 is the second game in the series, with a plot centered on trying to find out what happened to 2. An actual (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim 2 was released later as the third game in the series.
- Volcano Lair: Played straight, except that you are on the side of those using the lair.
- You Fight Like a Cow: Since it is done in Renpy, an engine intended for Visual Novels, the "combat" consists of arguments, and you have to either agree with your opponent to calm them down, or rebuke them, which often consists of insults.
