ArchiTac

About

ArchiTac is a single player casual simulation game. It was developed by Squish-Fish Games and was released on June 25, 2020. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Stranded on a deserted planet, you must explore and gather resources to craft buildings so that TAC can find and repair his spaceship.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Skip User Reviews

63%

Audience ScoreBased on 135 reviews

graphics8 positive mentions

optimization6 negative mentions

ArchiTac offers a charming and cute design, making it visually appealing and enjoyable to explore.
The game provides a fun and engaging puzzle-solving experience, with a clear end goal that encourages creativity.
It's free to play, allowing players to try it without any financial commitment, which adds to its appeal.

The game suffers from significant performance issues, including frequent crashes and low frame rates, making it difficult to play.
Many players find the controls and building mechanics to be clunky and unintuitive, leading to frustration during gameplay.
The content is quite limited, with a very short playtime and minimal replay value, leaving players wanting more.

graphics
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
45%
15%
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with many players criticizing the low-quality, low-poly visuals that detract from the overall experience. While some appreciate the cute aesthetic and potential of the art style, others report performance issues, including lag and crashes, even on lower settings. Overall, the visuals seem to be a significant point of contention, with a divide between those who find them charming and those who feel they fall short of modern gaming standards.
- “The graphics are so cute and I like the idea of the game.”
- “Really good and small game, sadly my GPU couldn't survive the awesome graphics this game had to offer, but aside from that, the gameplay was really nice.”
- “I absolutely love the aesthetic and how the main character looks.”
- “In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D visuals which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably.”
- “Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers.”
- “But the graphics are bad.”
music
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
42%
25%
The music in the game is described as cute and fitting the overall aesthetic, but it suffers from significant limitations, including a very small selection of only one or two repetitive tracks that abruptly switch, creating a jarring experience. Additionally, performance issues lead to stuttering audio, detracting from the overall enjoyment. While some players find the soundtrack therapeutic, the lack of variety and sound effects, along with the game's early development state, leaves much to be desired.
- “The soundtrack I like and the aesthetic is cute, but there is a lack of sound effects and the controls are not always the most responsive, which makes it feel slow.”
- “Cute game with nice music and great graphics.”
- “Its simplistic graphics combined with its soundtrack were very therapeutic and laid back.”
- “The music stutters; it's glitchy as hell even with an i7 and GTX 1080.”
- “The music, though cute, consists of only 1 or 2 songs that alternate through the day/night cycle, and the audio cuts very suddenly, which is jarring for the player.”
- “This is clearly a game very early in its development cycle, with a very simple crafting mechanism, 1 repeating soundtrack, and huge performance dips when looking at busier areas of the map.”
optimization
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
33%
50%
Overall, the game's optimization has been widely criticized, with users reporting significant performance issues such as lag, stuttering, and crashes, even on higher-end systems. Many players express hope for future improvements, noting that the current state feels like an early development phase with poor resource management and heavy particle effects contributing to the problems.
- “The game is good, but I hope it will be more optimized in the future as I struggle to get it to run smoothly on my computer.”
- “Also a notable thing: if you leave a resource gatherer alone for too long unattended, it will impact performance, especially the fishing machine. There is a particle effect when the fish get dropped in the water, and if there are too many fish in a pile, it may not be able to pick all of them up quickly. If you land in the water, all of those particle effects will happen at once.”
- “The only problem is that the game crashes and it's poorly optimized.”
- “Terrible lag and stuttering; closed and uninstalled the game after 2 minutes of playing.”
- “This is clearly a game very early in its development cycle, with very simple crafting mechanisms, one repeating soundtrack, and huge performance dips when looking at busier areas of the map.”
gameplay
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
20%
30%
The gameplay features a solid survival/crafting/building loop with fun mechanics and a charming design, though it suffers from unpolished execution and optimization issues. While some players find the building mechanics initially challenging, they become easier to master over time. Overall, the game shows great potential despite its lag and clunky controls, drawing comparisons to Minecraft's creative mode.
- “It's a cute game with actually fun mechanics and design.”
- “The gameplay loop is actually pretty solid and I can see a lot of potential in this game.”
- “The art team has done such an amazing job and the gameplay has such huge potential!”
- “Apart from the usual survival/crafting/building gameplay, you'll marvel at how completely unpolished and unoptimized the game is, and how shallow and barebones it is compared to more professionally made games.”
- “The 'gameplay' is basically Minecraft creative mode with clunkier controls for placing blocks.”
- “The graphics were slow and the gameplay was boring.”
stability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability is frequently criticized, with users reporting numerous bugs, glitches, and frame rate issues that detract from the overall experience. While some find the game charming despite its flaws, many recommend against downloading it due to the persistent technical problems.
- “It's pretty buggy; I found myself trapping myself in blocks without trying.”
- “Buggy and does not have good frame rates; don't bother downloading.”
- “There are also a few glitches, like not being able to place in certain areas and all your builds being moved or rotated a few studs when you enter the game.”
story
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's story revolves around a cat-cosmonaut who crashes on uninhabited islands and must gather resources to rebuild his ship. While the premise is intriguing, many users find the narrative to be very short and lacking in depth, resulting in a less than enthralling experience.
- “Very short story, not really enthralling however.”
- “The game tells the story of a certain cat-cosmonaut who was caught in the crash of his ship, and he was forced to search for resources on uninhabited islands to build a new one.”
grinding
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
300%
Players find the grinding aspect frustrating due to the auto-switching tool mechanic, which often leads to ineffective attacks and a tedious experience as they struggle to find the right tool for combat. This gimmick detracts from the overall enjoyment, making encounters feel more like a chore than engaging gameplay.
- “Auto-switching tools based on proximity or visual direction is a short-lived gimmick that leaves you flailing build hammers at enemies too close to your structures, or possibly the pickaxe, resulting in the hammer doing no damage. Finding the 'sweet spot' to actually attack the enemies becomes tedious and frustrating.”
- “The grinding in this game feels endless and repetitive, making it hard to stay engaged. It often feels like I'm just going through the motions without any real sense of progress.”
- “I find the grinding mechanics to be overly tedious, as it requires an excessive amount of time to level up or gather resources, which detracts from the overall enjoyment of the game.”
replayability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
300%
The game has been criticized for having virtually no replay value, indicating that players may not find enough incentive to revisit it after completing it once.
- “Absolutely no real replay value.”
- “The game lacks any incentive to play through again.”
- “Once you've completed it, there's nothing left to draw you back.”