Recent reviews by MrBlackSkull

I love pushing my frozen friends into the ghost

Fun little game, but dying first kinda sucks. I think it would be cool if, when you die, you can walk around as one of the background characters and interact with things, or just walk around and spectate the game as a different character.

You play as a fisherman on a boat, that goes around collecting relics across a vast ocean in various settlements. The game has heavy Elderich horror undertones.

One of the best games I played in recent memory, and is really one of those games that is much more enjoyable the less you know about it. As a side note, it is the perfect game to play on the Steam Deck.

I have now completed this game twice, once when it initially came out and now again a while after the Iron Rig DLC came out (Where I also decided to go for completion and get all the achievements as of writing this review). The atmosphere, and lore and gameplay are all immaculate. Maybe apart from the "Blackstone Key" DLC (Which I see as more of a "Thank / Support the Developers" kind of DLC, so get it at your own discretion), I think the DLC is very much worth your money if you enjoy the core gameplay loop - It's just more of the game you'll grow to love.

I refuse to say any more, just get the game already and experience it yourself!!

Cannot recommend more!

Played the first game a few years back, thoroughly enjoyed it (Even to the point of 100%ing it and grabbing all achievements)

Despite being a little bit short at the time of writing this (I have done everything the campaign has to offer right now) I would say this game lived up to the expectations of the previous game, even exceeding them at times. Sure, it's short but so was the first game, and this game is still in early access. I think I already got my money's worth with it anyway.

Few nitpicks after playing the campaign; I'll rank them in order of most inconvenient, to least inconvenient:
- Achievements sadly aren't shared in co-op. Added in a recent patch
- We had a few crashes in co-op. It was infrequent enough to not be the biggest issue.
- One of the achievements appears to be bugged and unobtainable Nevermind, I obtained it. I just didnt hit the post it node spiders enough times
- The cleaning minigame kinda missed in my opinion. I appreciate the diversity of all the other minigames, but I can't help but feel like the "Power Wash Simulator" minigame felt out of place and overstayed it's welcome. When I first saw it I thought "Oh interesting, a gimmick exclusive to this level. That's cool but I hope I don't have to do this too much" and then the game slaps you with requiring to do it 10 times for the minigun and an additional 10 times for the achievement. This part is entirely subjective, and I didn't hate doing the minigame (at least in co-op) but I did feel tired of it after the 5th time I did it. Maybe the tool you use for these minigames could have some upgrades that increase the size of the hose (Instead of increasing the damage it does to spiders? I'm not sure why you would ever use it as a weapon to be honest)
-There were too many of a different collectable limited resource than could feasibly be spend; not enough of one and too much of another. I assume it's just because there are more things planned in the future to use the "plentiful" resource on hence why you end the game with a surplus... New, expensive blueprints added in each new level, perhaps? One additional upgrade module was added in a recent patch.
- The game ends on quite a cliffhanger I entirely hope this is just because of early access, and "Spider Hell" will be a fleshed out location you can go to eventually. The developer confirmed (below) that spider hell will be somewhere you can go eventually.

Those things are the only nitpicks I can really comment on. And they are just that, nitpicks. I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this game, and I am really glad the campaign is co-op compatible.

Highly recommend this game, especially if you have played the first game and even more-so if you have friends willing to play it with you (I don't think friends are required to have a good time with this game, though!)


EDIT: Most of my gripes have been fixed in the newest patch, I am a huge fan of how open the development of this game is (i.e. the developer communicates with the community!)

I have gotten a chance to play a decent amount of Spider Hunt. Its really fun and addictive, but I think some things could use some work (These are personal opinions, not sure how easy or hard these things would be to do). In general, I feel like the game is HEAVILY favoured towards the exterminators (maybe a bit too much). The weapons are strong, Spiders are really loud, and its generally really hard to hide. I have some potential solutions to some of these problems; I don't think all of these need to be done, just a few of them to get the balance back to a good place:

- Currently, the game mode is split into 4vs4, with equal players on the exterminator and spider team. What if it was a little bit more skewed, e.g. 2 exterminators and 6 spiders? Teamwork and coordination is still possible this way, and spiders have the advantage of "power in numbers".
- Make spiders less noisy altogether. I think its a good idea to have some audio queue that a spider is nearby, but right now the noise happens way to frequently. More often than not, you don't even need the SPIDAR to locate the exact location a spider is in, just based on where the sound is coming from you can immediately find the location a spider is hiding. A simple fix might just be to make the sound occur more frequently, or generally lower the volume of the sound (so you have to be much closer to actually hear it).
- Explosives, such as C4 and the rocket launcher are way too strong; you aren't penalized nearly enough for collateral damage, it instantly destroys every spider in a large radius around the explosion, and you get quite a lot of ammo. I think the simplest solution is just limit the ammo of these weapons to 1, this way it feels like you should at least think about when it would be most wise to use it and use some planning, because right now if you have c4 its just an instant win because you can spam it wherever you vaguely hear a spider and you are almost guaranteed to kill them.
- The ability to place cobwebs as spiders is generally quite weak; more often than not, it gives your position away to exterminators (oh, theres a lot of webs here, probably a spider is nearby!), its really noisy to place a web (I swear I can hear it from the other side of the map, when a spider places a web) and the movement speed reduction of exterminators can be very easily bypassed by jumping through the web. In general, I think I've had more success in games by not placing any webs. Make placing webs silent, and make the slowdown more meaningful (honestly just fixing being able to jump through them might be enough). They're already easily removed by using any source of fire.
- I find it a little strange that spiders have namestags above them when you see them; There are some really creative spots I got into (usually on top of an object) that exterminators find me in really easily because my name would randomly show up, completely giving away my location. This should be hidden to exterminators in my opinion, and names should only be visible to teammates (I think its fine if spiders can see exterminators' names, honestly)
- Certain maps are just very hard to hide on as a spider (Especially the spaceship map. The map feels quite small and theres not that many creative places to hide). I have a few potential ideas as to how this could be remedied (but I don't know how easy this might be to do in practice). Two ideas I've had is, open up the maps more. The spaceship hangar is closed off, the mansion basement and attic are inaccessible, and the house in the center of the furniture store is locked away. These locations almost certainly will require adjustments to make them feel "fair" to play on, but more places to hide is a good thing.
-I have found that sometimes when hiding on props, the props become desynced. Even though you are hiding underneath the prop on your screen, the exterminator will see me completely out in the open. This bug has made me unwilling to hide on props in general.
-Another odd bug I found, is that sometimes when you are hiding too close to a wall or ceiling, the game puts this "x-ray" effect on that lets you see through the object. This is a good thing, however I sometimes saw this effect on other spiders while playing as an exterminator, and this completely gives away their position.
-I thought it was odd that there were no interactible doors in Multiplayer. All room doors should start open and only exterminators can interact with them; closing doors prevents spiders in that room getting out (Essentially quarantining that room). Being able to open cupboards and drawers (even as a spider, maybe with a cooldown) would just allow for a lot more variety when finding hiding places!

Love this game :)

It's incredible how this game can be either the most terrifying or most hilarious game I've ever played, seemingly at the flip of a switch, without feeling out of place.
Definitely check this out with friends.

I don't usually bother writing a review or collecting all of the achievements for a game, yet I did both here.

Quite possibly the best £2 I ever spent on a game on steam.

Edit: Game costs £4 now and has a few cheap DLCs, but I cannot stress enough that they are still absolutely worth it. Get the game already!

Good, but I recommend you get it with the DLC. The mouse and keyboard controls are a bit weird, I would recommend playing it on a controller, but I'm sure you could get used to the keyboard controls.
(Played a lot on an alternative platform)

This used to be my favourite game of all time, and for the longest time it has been in an unplayable state and as such I haven't gotten to enjoy it much recently. Although Valve has (finally) actually taken some action and made the game playable, having a functionally playable game, after at least 5 years of community outcry, is a very low bar to pass.

I would wait and see if they continue maintaining the game before investing into it. For all we know, they'll abandon it once more as soon as the Summer update drops.