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!

I fixed it “real good”, the last play-test was a disaster. I felt sorry for the play-testers who suffered through this last version of this game. I made a few last minute changes which streamlined the rules, but the precariously balanced energy economy took a turn for the worst. One player, just couldn’t get his engine (his Web) going well enough to accomplish anything. The other player slipped into a state of economic decline which was impossible to climb out of. I had to call it quits early to relieve them of their suffering. That was just one of the problems.

Aside from the broken economy, one of the underlying premises of the game was simply wrong. The game was intended to induce great economic swings, pushing a player between feast and famine which triggered certain automatic events, resulting in even more changes to the economic state . This boomerang effect rarely happened, and when the players actually wanted feast or famine, it was very hard to accomplish intentionally. This resulted in a boring game where players were often financially struggling, and would occasionally get beat up by the game. The few rewards the game gave out seemed random and the players didn’t have enough decisions which drove the game forward. Looking back, this was just a bad idea. What was I thinking?

If you were very familiar with the subtle economics of the game and played it a certain way, it could be fun. In real life, however, the game would likely end up in the trash can or be pitched off a roof long before anybody mastered the games many quirks. It’s time to dump the see-saw, semi-automatic, and often abusive economic system. Players just want to build webs and do what spiders do.

One thematic disconnect which the play-testers didn’t really complain about, but I had issues with was the baiting of the webs. Spiders aren’t fishing, they don’t put bait out to attract bugs. They go where the bugs are and try to snare them in their webs. The new version resolves this, and eliminates the awkward and fiddly mechanism of placing out bait tiles as well. The bug-hit areas are now distributed around the board, and the spiders have to expand their webs to to surround them. These special areas constantly accumulate bugs, enticing the spiders to compete over them.

One play-tester was not happy with the energy economy in any form. He was expecting more of a tile-laying puzzle, which is implied by the use of spider webs in the game. I think he might have been dissuaded more by the perceived scarcity of energy than the economy itself. Perceived scarcity, consumes much of a player’s cognitive bandwidth and can cause players to subconsciously fixate on the scarce item. This can result in overlooked opportunities, poor decisions and feeling that you don’t have enough player agency. Giving everyone more opportunities to overcome periodic scarcity and providing more potential abundance should overcome the extreme scarcity issues. This is addressed in the latest version.

As far as the game having an economic element goes, I believe that this accurately portrays a spiders life. Spinning a web, patiently waiting for bugs, and trying to capture enough food to make it another day is basically an exercise in energy economics. In times of abundance spiders will procreate. In times of famine, they conserve energy and try to make it to the next meal. It’s tough being a spider.

One feature that I’ve been wanting to implement is the greater use of different spider personas. Players can now decide which spider they will be at the beginning of the game and add additional spiders to their web with unique abilities. Asymmetry is always a nice feature to have in a game.

In this latest version (8d) I have eliminated the tight economic constraints, eliminated some of the awkward mechanics, and given the players more choices which drive the game forward. In other words, I’ve let go of the reins. Hopefully the game will stay on track and not end up in a heap on the side of the road. Fingers crossed.

Feel free to check out the latest virtual prototype in Tabletop Simulator. If it works out, I will start working on a proper set of rules. Drop me a line if you want me to guide you through it or play a game with you.

Comments are always welcome, whether it’s a shout-out, a compliment on my ingenious insights, or a even a crack about me being completely bonkers. I would love to hear any feedback.