Spitlings (Stadia)

When I first started watching trailers of Spitlings to see what the game would be about, it was hard to gel the on-screen action with some of the claims made in marketing. This “unforgiving Hardcore Action Game” seems to just have you shooting spit at little bouncing balls of goo, but this is definitely a case where the gameplay only appears simple on the surface. By the time I finished Spitlings, not only were there levels where I definitely died again and again and again, but the final boss certainly got me near 100 deaths, and despite this, the game is set up so you don’t dwell on failure for long as you’re thrown right back into blasting goo balls.

As for what a Spitling actually is, they appear to be cube-shaped beings that have incredibly powerful spit and come in many designs, colors, and styles. Some Spitlings are robotic, others are clearly based on creatures like a whale or spider, some have human hair, and others have their small bodies dominated entirely by enormous teeth. They’re all the same size, but their individual features and coloration make them a diverse bunch even though the individual appearance of a Spitling doesn’t have too much of an impact on the gameplay. There is one area where a Spitling might be preferred because of its appearance though, and that relates to their incredible spitting ability.

Each Spitling starts a level with ten balls of spit they can either fire upward or shoot below themselves to serve as a jump substitute. Picking up spit after it has made contact with a surface will give it back to you, hitting certain size goo balls causes a single spit glob to split into two, and there are some levels with infinite refill spots, but managing your spit properly is key to completing many of the rougher levels. You can recharge your spit if you find a safe place to sit, but some levels don’t even have solid ground to rest on, so managing your ten shots and any refill opportunities is a constant consideration in Spitlings. Because of this, your Spitling choice can sometimes hamper you. Every Spitling has a part of their body that shows how much spit they still have left. In creatures with teeth they’ll usually have ten teeth, the teeth disappearing one by one as you fire off spit globs and reappearing when you get a refill. Other Spitlings can recontextualize this in a readable manner like the spider Spitling having ten eyes that disappear or a telephone shaped Spitling losing its keypad, but some Spitlings aren’t as immediately readable in a game that favors high speed action. A Spitling might have only two giant teeth that gradually lose pieces, a visor that loses its whiteness in vertical slices, or a large eye that gets pieces taken out of it, but until you become familiar with the quirks of these new Spitlings, it might not be easy to tell when you’ve got certain quantities of spit remaining. There is technically nothing forcing you to switch Spitlings and early ones were made easy to read, the default four allowing for co-op play where no one has to have one of the more ambiguous designs. Still, since getting new Spitlings is a big feature of the game’s progression, it’s strange that certain designs weren’t tweaked to be more easily read in an instant.

There are plenty of Spitlings to find in Spitlings, and that’s because the game’s story focuses on retaking the Spitling city after some strange pink goo from the sky completely submerges the buildings in its gross gunk. The plot is told wordlessly and has very few developments, but the comic book styled cutscenes sometimes give the player some highly detailed images of the Spitlings meant to both gross you out and be comedic in the unusual amount of detail these small colorful cube-shaped critters have randomly received.  The only real important detail to the plot though is that the levels are arranged so you’re descending a tower to clear out all of the goo, the powerful spit of the Spitlings the only way to wipe out this unusual menace. Along the adventure, small sets of levels cap off with you freeing a Spitling, and if you can do those stages quickly enough, extra levels and an additional Spitling can be unlocked as well.

When things begin, Spitlings does take some time to start to reveal its more difficult elements. Goo balls bounce around very small levels, the cramped quarters often part of the challenge as you need to carefully move your character around and fire when the opportunity is right. You don’t want to lose spit by having it land on spikes, but it can be hard to track the goo balls since the larger ones break down into smaller ones when taking damage, some areas quickly becoming cramped if you aren’t a little strategic about how you handle your enemies. Springs can send you or your enemies high into the air, certain types of blocks can only be entered by you or the goo, you can ride around inside jelly safely to get the drop on goo balls, and other gimmicks keep getting introduced to the action very consistently. Later levels definitely ask for the player to have mastered their own movement, resource management, and the ability to handle gimmicks that can sometimes lead to an unwinnable stage even with a small slip-up, but Spitlings manages to avoid some player frustration by being incredibly speedy in general.

A single level in Spitlings will be completed in around a minute… if it’s one of the slower ones. Many Spitlings stages are very brisk when completed correctly and don’t really benefit from a ponderous play style. You can stay in place and watch the action in many if you need to, but taking down the goo balls can be done successfully in a short span even in the hardest levels. The final boss definitely takes the most time by its nature of being the big finale, and you’ll certainly spend more than a minute on most stages because a death will reset you to try the bite-sized stage once again. The swift retries allow the hardest levels to avoid becoming too annoying, and this is certainly key if you decide to play the game in co-op. If any of the four potential players die in a stage, the level is reset, so your increased firepower and room for error with your spit is properly balanced to ensure the game doesn’t lose its difficult edge. However, some stages will certainly be aggravating if the skill gap in the group is too large, so the “Hardcore” part of the title should be treated with at least some respect. There is a party mode where there isn’t as much pressure to succeed to allow for more casual play though.

The speed at which Spitlings’s stages go by can certainly be a bit surprising at times, some levels unable to leave an impression since their goo balls are so easily dealt with. The difficulty increase certainly helps prevent a player from breezing through it thankfully, and finally getting one of the more difficult stages to work out in your favor is definitely satisfying. There is certainly some craftsmanship put into the specific stage challenges later on, but Spitlings also offers a level editor where you or other players can make your own stages… or at least that’s what I’d say if it was available at the time of writing. Featured in the marketing and demonstrated by the creators in many videos, the level editor allows for you to build your own Spitlings stages, but it is not integrated currently, the mode instead slated for a future update. It could certainly add some longevity to the title like any form of user-created content usually does, but a challenging main game and the multiplayer party mode provide enough to ensure that Spitlings has a healthy amount of enjoyable content even before such an update.

THE VERDICT: Spitlings is a simple game about cube-shaped creatures spitting at goo balls, but through excellent level design, its seemingly basic mechanics and goals can become surprisingly challenging. A variety of gimmicks keeps things fresh in a game that already moves at such a brisk pace that nothing has the time to get old, and while an individual stage might ask for tight movement and resource management, the brevity of the levels means its quick to go right back in to try again. The design does lead to some quirks like forgettable early levels and some Spitlings aren’t the best fit for play, but a high quantity of high quality stages ensures Spitlings is still a fun time.

And so, I give Spitlings for Stadia…

A GOOD rating. Simple quick action can already be pretty satisfying on its own, but the difficulty curve in Spitlings is what allows it to grow out of the tame design of the early levels and find its footing in some interesting and demanding gimmicks. Reflex and planning are both required but neither to such a degree that it becomes taxing or too intricate for the simple premise, and since restarting a level is so quick and easy, even flubbing one of the more strategic levels can be easily ignored as you plunge back in to try again. It’s shocking how difficult the final boss is in the end considering it has a level that seems so simple on the surface, but by toying with its few limited variables properly, Spitlings builds an enjoyable adventure and one with some multiplayer longevity. It could be interesting to see how things could expand with a an increased focus on your abilities rather than special stage objects and hazards, but Spitlings still carries itself quite well just by relying on fitting stage design.

I am often wary of any game that uses its difficulty as part of its sales pitch since it is sometimes an easy way to turn needlessly punishing bad design into a feature, but Spitlings is smart about how it builds its tougher stages and thus makes its gameplay quite enjoyable. While the quantity of stages can lead to some breezing by a bit too quickly, rest assured the quality of many of them still shines through during the adventures of the crazy and colorful creatures called Spitlings.