Previews

GDC 2015: Hands-on with Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - a creepy puzzler you'll want to play when it's raining

Eight legged freaks

GDC 2015: Hands-on with Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - a creepy puzzler you'll want to play when it's raining
yt
Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

The cool thing about Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor was that it told you a story without really telling you a story.

There were no cutscenes, no text boxes, and no dialogue. Instead, tiny clues about the story behind Bryce Manor were hidden in the background - ready for eagle-eyed story fans to discover, but those who just want to hunt bugs could totally ignore it.

That's taken to a whole new level in the long-awaited sequel Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon. There's a deep and involving story here - about secret societies and mad professors and the like - but it's hidden in the environment, and often locked away behind puzzles that only the most persistent story tellers will be able to find.

You'll need to solve clues, look for cryptic symbols, study photographs, and consider the sequence of events that lead up to these environments looking like they do.

Of course, if you still want to just hunt bugs, that's all here. Like the first game you play as a spider who can create webs to trap insects. You tap on your spider to make him start spinning a web, then flick the screen to make him jump and leave a trail. If you create a triangle from web silk streams you'll form a cobweb.

Before, most of the insects just wandered into your trap. Not here: there are far smarter insects that you'll need to figure out how to ensnare. Like crafty flies and worms that drop from the ceiling.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is that it uses your location data to get your real-world time, weather, and even moon phase and replicates that stuff inside the game world so you could be playing during a calm day, or a rainy night.

This affects everything. Certain insects change behaviour, like the moths that are drowsy during the day but flitter like crazy when the lights come on at night. And the eviron ent changes: a watermill and a drain pipe work very differently depending on whether or not its raining.

You do have the option to alter the time and weather manually - if you live somewhere where it never rains or if you can't play in the day. But you're encouraged to play properly and think 'I gotta go play Spider!' as soon as it starts raining.

It all sounds wonderfully deep and cryptic, with promises of loads of puzzles and subtle stories that players won't be able to uncover for months (well - it depends on the phase of the moon). And if you're not into that, it's also another gorgeous bug-snatching game with a clever mechanic.

Spider 2 is coming to iOS some time later this spring. Tiger Style is also bringing the game to PS Vita.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer