[iPhone game] $2.99 Spider is a masterpiece

Tetsuwan Atom

It's funny, Spider may be the only game in recent memory that I have bought without having seen a single screenshot, video or a review. I bought it because of this:

"YOU ARE A SPIDER. One day you discover an abandoned mansion. Who lived here, and why did they leave? In search of answers, you must adventure from room to room, building webs to trap insects, and uncovering secrets in every dark corner. Do you have what it takes to solve the Bryce family mystery?"

Seriously, you don't get a concept that sounds more compelling than that, specially in this age of space marines.

I'm going to try to be as quick as possible with this (even if the game deserves many paragraphs to explain just how wonderful it is). Spider The Secret of Bryce Manor, a $2.99 game for the iDevices is a masterpiece. This little gem is one of the most refreshing and masterfully crafted games I've had the pleasure to play. The game shines in just about every single element that makes a game good.

The detailed hand-drawn visuals give the game an incredible sense of atmosphere. The aural experience is exquisite. And the most important part in any game, the gameplay, is just as good. Basically all you do is creating webs to capture bugs and eat them. The mechanics are really solid and combined with a fantastic level design you have a game that's a joy to play.

But what really makes of Spider an unforgetable experience is its story. Hideo Kojima (and many other developers for that matter) should play this title and learn how to effectively tell a story throughout the game.

The first time that I played Spider, I played it because it was a really fun game. The second time, I played it to find what really happened in that mysterious house. Man, this is not hyperbole at all: the way the developers approached story-telling with this game kick the absolute living sh*t out of almost every other game out there this generation. It's something that I have seen before in games like Fallout 3 or Bioshock, but not even those games did a job as good as in Spider.

There's not a single line of text, nor one second of a bullshit cutscene. All the story is told through the imagery in the environments. I've finished the game a few times now, and every time I find something new that connects to the plot of the game. And let me tell you, at first glance the story may very simple, but powerful and complex the more you investigate. I don't want to ruin the experience for you, but believe me that you are going to love what's going on here, and you are going to replay the game numerous times just to discover what really happened with the Bryce family. There's a twist in the game that absolutely blew me away and it just sent chills down my spine.

Spider The Secret of Bryce Manor single-handedly validated my purchase of an iPod Touch, and if you haven't bought it already, please do it.

ZackSchilling

The game is great, the art is fantastic and the mystery is mysterious enough that I had to play through the story mode about 5 times to get it all. Making webs is tons of fun. Replayability is through the roof.

Sometimes the frame rate takes a dive, even on the GS, and the music isn't all that great. On occasion, the game suffers from finger in the way syndrome. Generally, it's not an issue.

Honestly, this is about as pure and original as iPhone/iPod games get. If you own a device, you absolutely must get this. At $3, it's really a no-brainer. Highly recommended.

redfield85

I saw this reviewed on Co-op. Makes me want an iPhone even more.

Tetsuwan Atom

Weird, I never experienced any frame-rate drop.

Lunker

I haven't finished it yet, but so far comparisons to Braid aren't that far off. It's very ambient and somber, and it's just a joy to play by flicking and moving around.

FYI, two of the main men behind this game and Tiger Style were directly involved in Thief and Looking Glass Studios, if that turns any heads.

Pjstelford

Might want to add a link to the OP. Easy enough to find on itunes, but, well, that's my marketing schoolin kicking in.

Lunker

Okay, I just finished this for the first time, and it left me with very much the same impression that Braid did when I finished that the first time: I need to play this again, right now, because I have almost no idea what happened. In a good way, though; that really compelling good way when you feel like you've only scratched the surface of what's going on.

I disagree with ZachSchilling on the music; I love the soundtrack and it gave a really downtempo vibe to the whole game. Even though some of the songs are more upbeat, they're still somber.

But it's the mystery of what the hell happened, plus a bit of a hint/spoiler in one of the achievements for finding all of the secrets, that's pushing me to dive right back in. I think I'm going to write down some notes this time through and puzzle some things out. This is so refreshing in a video game: A team that understands the maturity and nuance of "show, don't tell," and making the player fill in some of the gaps on his or her own. Or not at all: you can still just play the game like a fun puzzle-platformer.

I need to see more games like this, on iPhone and beyond.

Henroid

This game for me would be like, "Be the enemy."

CorporateLogo

So is this tied in any way to the old ps1 game or no.

UncleSporky

Ok, since there's no chance of me ever owning or playing this game and it's not popular enough to have a walkthrough or even discussion at GFAQs, I'm going to need the whole story spoiled here. Thanks.

Lunker

UncleSporky wrote: »

Ok, since there's no chance of me ever owning or playing this game and it's not popular enough to have a walkthrough or even discussion at GFAQs, I'm going to need the whole story spoiled here. Thanks.

If I knew what was happening, I'd be more than happy to oblige! :P I also snuck a peek at GameFAQs and saw absolutely nothing there, though there is a general info page.

I don't know if it's really the kind of thing you can write out, though, since the entire game is about running around as a spider in an empty mansion and using the background art and hidden areas/rooms you find to piece together an entirely optional backstory. When I jot down some notes, though, I might write up a basic line of what I think is happening.

CorporateLogo wrote:

So is this tied in any way to the old ps1 game or no.

I don't think so; I don't know anything about the PS1 game, but aside from "You're a spider and you spin webs to eat bugs" it's a brand-new story written up by Tiger Style.

UncleSporky

Actually I found a thread explaining the whole thing, as far as anyone knows currently. Later pages have it all with theories. Pretty interesting.

Six

This game sounds interesting. Tough to say no to $3.

Lunker

UncleSporky wrote: »

Actually I found a thread explaining the whole thing, as far as anyone knows currently. Later pages have it all with theories. Pretty interesting.

Ahh, I will do my best not to peek.

I'd almost forgotten that the iPhone has built-in screenshotting, so I started a new game and have been snapping pics throughout. I'm doing it mostly for my sakes but if anyone else is interested, maybe I'll do a ghetto-rigged Let's Play out of it. I would think it would ruin a lot of the game's discovery by pointing out specifically the things in the background that you're supposed to notice, but it might be fun.

Six

Is this too big to download over 3g? I'm thinking of buying it but don't have wifi here.

schmads

I just checked and the App store says 56.5MB, which is too big for 3G (isn't the cutoff 10MB?). I take it you also don't have your computer there to download it and transfer it across?

ZackSchilling

No, I bought it over Wifi and played right away. Actually, I've bought everything, music included, totally wirelessly. I sync to give the music to the computer.

Septus

Ah, this is the dude who works at Junction Point. I was told to buy it, but I was hesitant. So I guess I can't play this with my weak-ass first gen iPhone

Edit: Whoops, misread that. I would have to buy this over wi-fi.

Any idea how it runs on a first gen?

Six

well fuck, since wifi on my 3g is broken seemingly for good, I guess I'll have to buy it on the pc.

The Reverend Dr Galactus

I can't tell you how great it is to see a game with "broken chairs" on the iPhone. It's a game dynamic that has been too long neglected in favor of straightforward narrative delivery.

"Broken chairs" is a concept named after a classic scene in Myst: in the Channelwood age, in Sirrus' lair, there are a number of interactive elements that can advance the game and the story, but there's also something that isn't interactive or story-affecting, but nonetheless hints at its own subplot: a couple of broken chairs in the otherwise lavish room. What happened here? You can complete the entire game without even noticing them, but they work together with other random bits of evidence to tell a deeper story.

Lunker

Gamasutra has a really great writeup on a panel with Tiger Style from GDC Austin. The full writeup is here, but some cool quotes:

Spider's eight month long development cycle began with a vision statement, written by Smith, which was excerpted for the presentation -- quotes like "not about orcs", "2D, not 3D", "leverage exploration, expression, and player ownership", "only one major risk or experiment", "unique" informed the development before the concept was even frozen.

Smith and Kalina launched the company without going the traditional business route -- self-funded, with plain English agreements with contributors to the project, and distributed development with no central studio, using collaborates across North America who were paid only with royalties. "We... got to choose the people we work with and the people we really love and appreciate," says Kalina.

Distributed development without firm agreements "sounds like the worst management nightmare of all time," says Smith, "but we had a really good approach to it. There are not a lot of rules to collaborating with Tiger Style. There's a lot of flexibility about what parts of the project you want to contribute to."

The game was released at $2.99, higher than the conventional wisdom of the 99 cent app but lower than the initial $5 target they had hoped to aim for. "This is a really tricky problem and we started thinking about this from day one... We wanted to make a $5 and we ended up shipping at $2.99," says Kalina.

How was the price selected? Says Kalina, "For a couple of months, I paid attention to comparable games" -- new IP, indie developers, platformers. "There seemed to be this niche we could carve out" between 99 cent titles and $4.99+ major publisher games using established IP. "That's kind of how we landed on $2.99."

Ten days after Spider was submitted to Apple, it was approved for sale -- but they weren't ready. "We quickly discovered that this marketing operation was a full time job, and we hadn't experienced it as console developers," says Kalina. "This is something you had to pay attention to and really consumed a lot of time."


Kalina thinks that the user community at iPhone game website TouchArcade had more to do with sales than even the game's blurb on the USA Today website; but he notes also that this community expected developers to participate in their discussions before they would buy a game.

I've taken a bunch of screenshots of my previous runthrough, and I got to the secret room but think I missed one of the regular level secrets; I'm still looking through all of the pics, and every time I flip through I find more interconnected details.