WEBBED

When the explorers from the UFO Society brought the Symbiote back to us, we had no idea what secrets the machine contained...

At first glance of human design, despite organic protrusions that made it impossible to clearly define its biological or mechanical composition. Our first objective was to recover any residual metadata, as the machine had been damaged...

To our surprise, there were still textual and graphical elements in the Symbiote, and with a lot of hard work, our team managed to extract what appears to be a primitive videogame artistic expression, like a predation simulation. Perhaps a mimicry of what this half-mechanical, half-biological element had been able to adapt from its environment. As you can see, this discovery leaves us with more questions than answers, but it's up to you to make up your own mind...

Gameplay:

As time flies, Spider's HP are decreasing to a certain death.  
There are two ways to score, and therefore gain more playtime symbolised by HP:

1. Draw a web around a single or multiple insects to consume them, with a combo feature implemented.
2. Enter mini-boss fights and execute QTE to defeat powerful insects and gain higher rewards.

Controls:

Game originally designed for the "Symbiote" arcade machine, given as a constraint during the Jam: 

Left bouton > start a web, put a junction in the web
Right bouton > cancel the web, enter a QTE
Middle trackball > move the spider, execute QTE

Symbiote machine decorated by the team

Going further

As the Game Jam format didn't allow us to fully push all desired features, here are a couple of lost ones that couldn't be implemented.

• Rock 

On a regular time basis, rocks fall out of the sky to destroy your main web, restraining you in your movement around your home. However, you can repair the holes through a QTE.

• Special insects

A special insect that would appear once in a while could have been implemented. Hard to catch because of its random pattern movement and speed, it provides provisional powerups that will help Spider sustain itself with ease. 

• Penalty insects

Sometimes, a special red insect would appear and pass through the screen. If it hits the web being created by Spider, it will destroy it. 

• Rush hour

On a fixed basis, a "rush hour" type event would be triggered, leading to an increased spawn rate of insects popping into the playable area, allowing the player to rapidly gain massive amounts of score and HP.

Crew:

Game Design

• Hugo Monmousseau
• Adrian Parmentier-Ridgway

Game Programming

• Amaury Mehlman
• Pierre Lamare

Game Art

• Inès Roussies
• Juliette Joukowski

Project Management

• Ronan Jouan

Created in September 2023 for IIM's Godfather Game Jam.