Thanks, this is my first 'full' PICO-8 game, after tinkering with it a bit. I really only scratched the surface & I'll definitely be using it more in the future.
As for shooting the monster, I didn't quite manage to incorporate the gun as well as I was hoping ; the intention really was for it to buy you a bit of time/respite by disabling one or multiple tentacles temporarily (at the risk of you getting flung off in attempting to land a shot).