Spiderbite
WARNING: This shmup involves a bit of strategy in how you play. Traps must be set, greed must be silenced, defeat must be accepted. If this doesn't sound like fun, this game is not for you.
Shoot the flies before they get to you! Get to new levels to unlock cosmetics! Fight the boss- but with no health upgrades available! Collect gold to upgrade your health- but watch out- the game doesn't get any easier the farther you progress. You just get better at playing it.
WASD to move, Space or Z or Enter to shoot.
You shoot in the direction you last moved in.
Don't let them get to you.
Development log
- The Death of SpiderbiteDec 17, 2019
- Spiderbite News Bite!Mar 18, 2018
- Version 1.0- The Bigger UpdateMar 09, 2018
- Spiderbite News Flash!Mar 01, 2018
- Video!Feb 16, 2018
- Version 0.5- Green Growth UpdateFeb 13, 2018
- Version 0.4.0: Useless Book UpdateFeb 10, 2018
- Version 0.3.2Feb 07, 2018
Comments
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Hi Monsterbat, collecting gold seems to be a little random: on some occasions I can collect Gold, on others I don't, meaning that I can never collect enough Gold to purchase the Useful/Useless book, especially when said Gold does not accumulate over the many retries you make.
Also, what happened to the skins? I couldn't find them in the shop anywhere, which of course made it more difficult for me to shoot the flies while being light grey (as well as progress far without using the LIKJ buttons DX)
Having said that, there was only so much I could do once I reached the boss, so after a long while of playing using only the arrow and Enter buttons (& a little freezing up of the fingers due to the strain :p), I switched to the 'sissy mode' controls, which helped me beat the final boss (interesting idea to have the boss invincible while he's red, and vulnerable when blue :) ).
The ending was quite vague, as it makes no mention of the insects rebelling against the spiders :p
In terms of the achievements, I managed to get the first 3 and the last 2, while the 4th and 5th achievements remain unlocked.
I'm happy that you added in the LIKJ fire buttons, as it's really helpful when you want to give a break to your left hand :)
I've enjoyed playing this game, and look forward to playing more of your games in the future :D
Thanks again for your feedback, Hobcramwork! 1: In relation to the gold- Currently, it is entirely luck based (something I personally dislike, and will be fixing as soon as possible). Every thirty seconds you survive, you have a 20% chance of gaining a gold piece. One of my playtesters managed to get three or four gold pieces over a few plays, while I only managed to get one after ten or twenty! So that will be changed as of version 0.6, which will introduce a few large gameplay changes!
2: The skins aren't working for you? I've been testing my game for a while, and I've never heard of this as of 0.5. In fact, I just loaded up the game, and the skins are working for me. Is there a chance that you didn't have a high enough score before you went to the unlocks screen? If not, is there any way you could send a screenshot of your problem?
3: The boss fight was meant to be pretty hard... but it's not the end of the game. I plan on introducing challenges and most likely additional bosses that more of the story. Mostly, the final "cutscene" was really only there to get you thinking about what could be going on.
I'm glad you're having fun!
1) I see, so that's why I didn't always get gold each time I had a certain number of points or reached the boss several times :p
2) Yes, I have been seeing the same screen ever since I started my playthroughs yesterday (from score 0 to 1030) such as the one below:
3) Ah, I see; that would make sense, seeing as it sounded like an experiment was taking place in a laboratory, or a building that's about to be infiltrated by some spy :)
Ah, I see what your problem is with the skins: you're in the wrong section! It's not in shop, its in unlocks XD
I'm gonna try to touch up the main menu pretty soon
Oh, ha ha to me then XD; on that note, I believe the problem with me not noticing it is that I thought the word 'Unlocks' was part of the game's title, due to the font not being consistent for each of the Menu items, as so:
Anyhow, I see I had managed to unlock all the skins :D
Aside from that, it occurred to me that the game sound more like it's occurring in an abandoned hospital (due to a patient showing some slight improvement in their vitals), or an experiment in a laboratory :p
Other than that, the fifth line of the Ending scene text seems to be incomplete, 'But Sir, some of the values have...' (or not?)
Also, the amount you have left doesn't display when you're fighting the boss, there's no visible indication as to when you've been hit, while the text that displays what level you're at, the amount of gold and points you have, your highscore, the boss's HP as well as your remaining HP are almost invisible/blended in with the background :p
Also, I can't select the 'Brilliant Overload' skin despite having unlocked it, and the Skins can only be selected when you hover the mouse cursor over the the title of the skin, instead of the full line :o
Other than that, while I've discovered the amount of Gold you carry does accumulate after each game (as in, you got X amount of gold in one playthrough, died, start over, get more gold, die, and you have more gold to spend :) ), it does not increase beyond 4 (maybe due to no more gold being spawned to collect etc?), making it next to impossible to acquire the Pointless Book :/
Edit: Never mind, I managed to accumulate enough Gold in order to purchase the Grimoire, which gave some insight as to what to do to get that last achievement, and also, clever use of the names Thomas and Jefferson (& that reference to 'Lord of the Flies', which I kept forgetting about XD)
You can buy health upgrades even when you have no gold, making your gold just go negative.
Working on a fix for the whole health upgrade situation as we speak. :)
Fixed! :)
Hi, Perhaps you could put up the controls (arrow buttons for movement, space bar for shooting), as I didn't know what to do at first, and do some testing of how the shooting button makes the page scroll downwards, thus making it difficult to play the game for longer than 10 seconds :p
I've just posted an update to the game that should have fixed the problems you were having. Thank you for your feedback!
Hi, the space bar button still makes the scrolling bar go down, but anyhow, I managed to get to the first boss, only to die :p
One thing to note: A message popped up after shooting the flies for a while about having collected a gold coin (didn't see any object that resembled such a thing during the game), only for the gold count to remain at zero, even when I was facing off with a boss, thus not letting me buy any health upgrades; also, when I last played the game (about 13-14 days ago), I had managed to get the Truly Pacifistic achievement, but after facing off with the boss today (my first time), the achievement disappeared :(
Other than that, it took a while to get used to 'pressing a direction button before pressing the Enter button to shoot in the desired direction' mechanic, but it was a good idea as it forces you to be careful where you move and makes you want to keep moving to avoid getting hit :D
I noticed, though, that my first few times of playing the game today was hampered by the slightly camouflaged spider (hardly distinguishable at times unless you keep moving, since the red eyes help a bit in this regard), so you might want the spider either brighter or ver dark as compared to it's background :p
Thank you for your extensive review! In light of that, I'm going to attempt to address each of your points with one of my own. Apologies if it's a bit long :)
One, I have incorporated multiple controls for shooting into the game. If one doesn't work, another might. Check the description or the in-game page labeled "controls" to find out what does what :)
Two, I have begun to encounter problems with some values behaving as they should in my downloadable test version and the same values not working in the online version. The gold value is one of these values. I'll look into how to fix it, although it may take more time than fixing the HP problem that arose before the patch.
However, I am also working on an update that should phase out the need for gold to upgrade your max health. :P
Three, the pacifist achievement tree has been bugging out to some major degree, and I had planned on maybe even getting rid of that achievement all together and replacing it with some more straight forward ones. For your information, the pacifist achievement tree was supposed to activate once you dodged flies without killing them for an extensive period of time (ten minutes to be exact)... yeah, I'm probably getting rid of that.
Three, I'm glad you thought that the movement/aiming system was a good piece of gameplay. I was considering replacing it with twin stick controls, but even if I do I believe I'll release an "original mode" or something along those lines with the original controls still intact.
Finally, if you got far enough in the game, you should have unlocked a few skins in the unlocks menu. Simply click on the word "Unlocks" in the main menu and select a skin, then play the game and the skin should show up. This should help make the spider more visible :)
Good luck, and thanks for the feedback!
P. S. good job getting to the boss with the gold system glitching, on one health it took me a few days to do!
No worries, I tend to write long responses (& dev logs) as well :)
1) Yes, I took note of that, and switched to using the Enter button for shooting soon after the Space button was misbehaving :D
2) Oh, I see. It seems that when I last wrote my reply, the spider can only survive 1 hit before being taken back to the main menu :p
3) He he, I too was wondering how on earth I had achieved such a feat, seeing that my spider never lasted more than a minute before getting hit by the flies D: ; nice touch on having the flies constantly heading towards you each time they spawn :)
4) Yes, it added quite a bit of challenge to the game, as compared to just spamming the Attack button and just steering clear out of harm's way :p
5) Hmm, I've never come across the Skins, even in the Unlock screen, and the only thing I would see is the unattainable/non-purchasable Health upgrade :(
P.S.S.: Heh, I didn't even realise there was a boss fight until it showed up, and then I forgot that I could shoot the bullets it was firing at me, leading to me 'dodging' into incoming fire :P XD . The gold glitch didn't affect me as I thought it was just a text display at the top right corner, seeing as the gold counter remained at zero throughout that one session (& the sessions that came after it) :p
Just finished releasing version 0.3.2. The unlocks page now works, along with a bunch of other bug fixes you mentioned. Thanks again!