Arachnid has received a major overhaul in this latest version, #16. It is now a cooperative game and the shifting action track is back, better and stronger than it ever was. The first public play-test went fairly well and all the pieces seem to have come together. It’s been a long road so far, and there is definitely a lot of testing and refining to be done, but it looks like the game is now on the right track. The following is a brief description of the game in it’s current state.

Arachnid v16 Cooperative

Theme

You are part of a colony of spiders, struggling to survive in a harsh “Bug eat Bug” world. Build your web, grow your colony and enhance your skills as you fight the elements and fend off attackers. The battles with invaders culminate with you eating your attackers after they are vanquished. Can you and your fellow spiders survive long enough to claim victory over several waves of invading insects?

Game Description

Arachnid is a cooperative game for 2-4 players. Each player is a spider, and starts out with a hand of action cards. This hand of cards will evolve over time as the player’s unique roll in the colony becomes more clear.

The play area is a hex grid, where  players place tiles to show the web as it is spun. This shared web is the spider’s home, which they expand and reinforce to catch their prey. Bugs occasionally fly by, becoming trapped, and eventually, food. These Bugs are also used to acquire new skills, and breed more spiders to enhance the colony.

Players plan their strategy by laying out cards, face up, on an action track. This represents the possible actions the players might take. Players then choose which actions to take on a given turn by placing a token on the card of their choice, activating it. The chosen actions are resolved and the activated cards are removed from the track. The remaining cards are shifted downward and new cards are added to the beginning of the track. This action track is constantly shifting and the cards can gain more power or become less costly to use as they advance down the track. Players must anticipate events like bug attacks and storms, while deciding between leaving cards on the track to gain strength or using them to perform actions.

Each turn, a new event token is drawn from a bag. Events can range from bugs flying into the web, a storm, or an attack from a dangerous invader. Storms wipe out webs that aren’t properly reinforced, and clear off consumed bugs, so more can be captured. Storms also trigger replenishing of the event bag, which adds more powerful invaders to threaten the web.

How to win.

The life of a spider’s web is limited. The source of food is constantly diminishing, until it is no longer possible for the colony to thrive. The spider colony must build the web quickly and efficiently, to better cope with the ever increasing threat of weather and invading bugs. If the colony survives with no injured members as the last bugs are caught, then they are victorious. The spiders are now ready to start all over, with a new web in a new location.

After making extensive changes and adding everything but the kitchen sink, I decided to change the movement rules as well. I then subjected a couple of playtesters to this hobbled together, jury-rigged mess. After an overly long teach by me and a few ambiguous rules, we set out to be the best spiders we could.

Surprisingly, the game held up and the playtesters don’t hate me yet. Some of the components even worked quite well as the players got used to the odd action selection mechanics. The game pace, however, was too slow and plodding. The movement was unclear and there were a few ambiguities in the new rules. I called the game early before the game went off the rails. I need to get back to basics.

I will start by creating a simpler version of the game to help with on-boarding, as suggested by one of the playtesters. This will give me a chance to refine and simplify the movement mechanics and make sure the game is running smoothly before I start to add any additional bells and whistles. This alternate version will be easy to accomplish with a two sided player board. For now, I will call this “Arachnid Light”. This stripped down version will not have the asymmetric spider abilities or the complicated shifting action card tableau. If I can make this lighter version fast and fun, it might fit in a popular game niche of lighter family style games. Adding the additional features in an advanced version of the game should appeal hobby gamers who like a more challenging pursuit of fun. Either way, the game will work much smoother, once I’ve ironed out all the bugs in the basic game play of the light version of game. At least I hope so!

A special thanks to all the playtesters and game designers who have helped me out so far. I hope I can make a fun game for you.

Finally, I was able to incorporate some interesting decisions into the Arachnid game with version #10. Before this, the game was predictable, repetitive and things weren’t happening fast enough. The game and the theme promised loads of fun, but it just didn’t deliver. The players needed to make more interesting decisions and the players always wanted to do more. The new shifting action tableau solves both those problems.

Players get a hand of action cards and place them onto a constantly shifting action tableau which works like a conveyor. Each time a card is added to the left, the tableau shifts to the right and the last card is taken back into the hand. The cards themselves have three different, or modified, actions which trigger based on the card position in the tableau. As the cards progress down the tableau, the costs of the actions tend to increase, and, in some cases, the actions change.

The player can perform any or all of the actions available on the tableau as long as they can pay the associated costs. Instead of a card action, a player could place a movement token on the card to move a spider, or a consume token on a card to eat the bugs on their web. On the next turn, the skipped actions will shift to become more expensive.

The player is faced with some interesting decisions. The timing of when to introduce actions into the tableau and the necessity of sacrificing actions to consume bugs and move their spiders, makes for some interesting tactical planning. Performing multiple actions effectively is fun and changing your tactics because of another player’s interactions is maddening. (But still fun.)

The game flows much faster and is full of some tense moments. I’m just tweaking things now to get the bug economy working right and make the game flow smoother. Version #10 is ready for some real testing. Fingers crossed!