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| Source // MobyGames |
A long, long time ago, in the arcades of the early 1980s, was a puzzler by the name of Qix. You had to draw lines to create boxes, sectioning off the screen from the enemies buzzing about and ruining your chances of filling up your level quota. Carve out 75% of the play area and the level is yours. Rinse and repeat as enemies moved faster and there were more of them.
It was addictive, it was tricky, but it was ultimately short lived. But what if it was given a complete makeover? What if it could be thematic, rather than abstract? What if it could have a story, a point to doing it all?
Strictly speaking, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor isn't Qix remade, but it's a good place to start thinking about it.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
In the mobile game Spider, you are a spider. There you are, on a leaf. Like an actual spider, you can clamber along any surface your multiple legs can reach, and that includes going up walls and hanging from ceilings. Gravity? Who needs that?
Actually, we need that, because you can jump as well. It's more of a frantic dash that follows the swipe of your finger, but you'll be leaping from object to object in ways that are sure to scare all the arachnophobes out there.
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| Source // MobyGames |
When spiders aren't running around and terrorizing people thousands of times their size, they're making webs. Touch the spider to activate his silk spinner, or whatever mechanism they have, and your leaps through the air will be followed by a silky strand.
Complete a few leaps to form at least a triangle and those strands fill with web. What do webs catch? Bugs. What do spiders eat? Bugs.
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| Source // MobyGames |
That's Spider. Each level tasks you with eating a certain amount of bugs, and game modes involve you having to eat frantically within time limits or with a limited amount of silk, but that's about it. Qix for the iPhone age, complete with colourful, painterly backdrops that are something special to look at.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
It's no surprise that an HD version would find its way to the iPad in later years because each level is set in Bryce Manor, an abandoned home full of secrets for you to explore and work out in your own time.
That'd be where the subtitle comes in, The Secret of Bryce Manor. What is the secret? Where is everyone? Why aren't they here anymore?
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| Source // MobyGames |
This entire aspect of the game is completely optional because you are, in fact, a spider who only cares about eating bugs. Anything else that happens in this place doesn't factor into the spider's life at all. It doesn't know what people are. It doesn't understand what a secret is. All that stuff is on you, the player, and not on it, the mechanism through which you explore the surroundings.
Final Word
What an interesting little idea. A game on the surface, a story underneath. Is that story any good? I've no idea, I've not been able to play Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. I could check out the sequel, released six years later, which did get a release on the PC and PlayStation 4 in addition to mobile. It looks an awful lot more polished than even this first game and has the same gameplay.
The same gameplay... it's simple, and different modes mix it up to keep things fresh, but how many webs can you spin before it gets old? I'd probably guess at more webs than Qix boxes, owing to the variety of places you'll find yourself crawling through and how much more visually appealing a web slung across a kitchen is compared to a coloured box. But how much more?
Spider is definitely a game that does things a little differently to a great many others, but whether it has the staying power is something I can only answer if I ever get around to playing it or its sequel, and while I'm not scared of spiders, I'm not desperate to see what they get up to, and while uncovering mysteries can be interesting, abandoned houses don't really get me on the edge of my seat, either.
What I can say is that we should keep our eyes out for it, though. Not to stamp on it, but to admire how it does what it does.
Fun Facts
Not all of the insects you encounter get stuck in your web. To take down those that are a little more stubborn in that way, you can leap on them, spearing them out of the sky instead.
Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, developed by Tiger Style, first released in 2009.
Version watched: iOS, 2009 (TouchArcade)