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Arachnicite's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Hello Pirate Jammer, Thank you for the submission. Starting with my experience playing the game. I like the controls and moving around felt tight and consistent. I did notice some advanced platformer mechanics were implemented, like wall jump, a tutorial level explaining the cool things you added would be great. The NPCs got stuck and glitched out on the slopes in the game and you could stand on top of them and they can’t hurt you. I liked the intro and the general concept of a transforming spider sword along with the steampunk vibe. I had a hard time figuring out what to do and got sort of lost while playing. I liked the intro theme but it just stopped playing after a little bit and then the game had no sounds at all. Some SXF and/or VXF when things are happening could go a long way. Finally, the GDD you made was kind of bare bones, if you got some more thoughts in there you might be able to build up an even cooler game in the long run. Even if those extra things didn't make it into the prototype, knowing what you wanted to do would have been cool. Ps. I loved the dishonored series, a good choice of inspiration. Thanks again.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/118AElzBcDHkXFD_n1T0Vin8OEsHWCGbUaHLsl1FjhnU/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Arachnicite is a Metroidvania inspired platformer and top-down game about a sword spider parasite controlling hosts to navigate around an airship, featuring alternating between controlling human and spider characters, each having their own individual abilities. The player must use the strengths of each character to navigate through their respective levels.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The player is a parasite spider that is also a sword
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Comments
Interesting concept. I think the highlight of the game was changing between a platformer to a top down and back again. Expand on that idea! I liked the music at the beginning and I loved the opening cutscene. Would have loved more of that and some SFX. The controls felt clunky. Especially once I could cling to walls. I had no reason to fight any of the enemies as the melee felt clunky and I could outrun/maneuver them easily. I think going back and getting your character controller smooth and solid would be your best bet here. My favorite movement was when there were two walls and I could hop between them rather than sticking to a wall and just jumping up it. Good job on the animations for the cutscenes. My favorite bug was being able to moonwalk!
Good job on submitting this!
This is quite a cool game, played a while but got lost in the second area, not sure where the intended place to go, but I guess the wall climbing was too powerful and I just abused it too much, losing the intended path. I'd say it would be nice if there were more instructions on where to go or what to do. Also some sound would be nice too.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Really cool intro! And overall, some quite nice visuals - I especially liked the parallax effect.
It was a bit hard to kill enemies, so I chose to mostly avoid it - which is ok, but a bit strange since it is themed around a weapon. Also, there was some bug with jumping - sometimes I jumped like twice high or so. Or was it a feature? I didn't quite understand.
Overal - nice submission! Could also benefit from some more sound effects and music - the game became silent when the music stopped.
Very nicely done, It was fun navigating the maze-like environment with the pale background. It was also fun to play around with the wall climbing, though the controls of it felt a bit unoptimized, just in how we go faster by spamming space as fast as possible. I think you could add some reward for the combat? Or maybe I didn't get far enough! It was fun, but the navigation was more enjoyable so I ended up ignoring the enemies. As Injate suggested, making them more dangerous/hard to avoid would add to the experience if avoiding them was the intended playstyle.
Thanks, we definitely plan on reworking the controls, and tweaking the combat a good bit, I'm glàd the navigation was enjoyable, thank you for the feedback!
I started off by trying to fight everyone in hand-to-hand combat, then realised that maybe wasn't the move, and had a great time bouncing around from then on - the wall climbing was really fun to explore with! I managed to find my way to the end, but would agree with the other comments that a map would be super helpful.
The verticality of the levels made exploring fun, but the length probably could be a bit more concise without losing that!
All in all, a lovely lil' entry, well done to the whole team!
Thank you!! The artist dedicated two days to the cutscenes and is very glad to see such good reception. Glad to hear you enjoyed the wall climbing. We will definitely be adding a map and improving the level designs as we go!
The level of effort in the artwork, cutscenes and level design is clear, and each of those aspects are very strong, I think like others that a map would be helpful and the wall jumping mechanic is a little too 'sticky'. I kept getting a little stuck on the edge of platforms and tighter corridors. Overall, a very interesting concept with the narrative being told through artistic cinematic cutscenes and a big sprawling world, with segments played as different characters. Great job to all!
Thank you, I'm glad to hear you like the art and level designs! We'll definitely be improving on the wall jump in the future!
Glad to receive such great feedback!
I like the art style and animations, were you influenced by Another World or Flashback at all? If not check them out!
Like nulture, I almost got lost in level 2 also so my #1 request would be a map. The scale of things felt too big at first but it ended up being pretty fun jumping around like spider man.
The enemies felt dangerous but not since I ended up running from them a lot so perhaps some changes would help - if avoiding enemies was the intended play style, then maybe make them even more dangerous and have the player leverage their wit rather than brawn against them through clever level designs.
I'm glad you like it, and actually, the artist had never even heard of those games before your comment and is surprised you'd compare our art to that (as in surprised you'd compare ours to such high quality and gorgeous art) I'll definitely give them a play myself for sure, I'd heard of them a few times before but never tried them.
A map is absolutely in the plans for future updates, though I am glad you enjoyed the movement.
The enemies do definitely need some work, better telegraphing and timing of the attacks, I tried to make their attack 1.5 times the length of the player attack but that isn't enough time to properly dodge without near perfect timing, I'd definitely want to balance it more in the future, and making enemies be something to avoid as much as possible isn't a bad idea, I like it, thanks for the feedback!
I was actually shocked to find how absolutely massive the world is! It was so large in fact that I got lost on level 2… but hey I’m impressed. I was doubly surprised to see animated cutscenes, as well as abilities like the wall cling. Great job folks!
Thanks, honestly we were worried it wouldn't be enough level so hearing the feedback that it's quite large is very reassuring! A map is definitely on the table when we start updating, a priority even, plus we plan on making there be any kind of obstacle on Level 2. The animated cutscenes were actually quite difficult to implement, and it's good to hear that you like the wall jump/cling, we wanted to make sure that there'd be upgrades to movement to make it feel like a proper Metroidvania.I'm glad you enjoyed it!