This was a fantastically atmospheric body horror game with evocative set dressing and writing, and the soundtrack is just perfect. I really liked the upfront expectation that our characters were probably all going to fail horribly, so we could just focus on making it interesting. It made it much easier to stay immersed in the storytelling headspace as our characters kept getting more and more beaten down. I also appreciated the many opportunities for fleshing out our stories at the end of each scene.
That said, one mechanic felt a little incohesive. The game keeps suggesting you should backstab each other, but none of our characters were incentivized to backstab each other (at least...not before acquiring the treasure) because backstabbing would only have lessened our already very slim survival chances.
If you really wanted to have backstabbing in the game, you could constrain the character goals to be more actively in conflict. For example:
- one person is set on killing the queen, another person wants to control the living hive
- believing a myth that you can buy safe passage by giving up another party member
- there isn't enough of some key resource to keep everyone safe
Of course, you could also just do what our party did, and work together staunchly until the horrifying end.
I also noticed that things felt more fun when the GM gave us time limits by making the situation more dangerous if we were taking too long to come up with an excessively reasonable plan.