YE OLDE SPIDERPEDIA
Pro tips on the gameplay of Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon.
Table of Contents:
The Basics
The World of Spider
Advanced Gameplay
The Basics
Spider starts with a good tutorial, and you can also learn all this stuff just by playing and experimenting!
As a spider, you can walk on walls and ceilings, and you can jump.
"Anchor" before jumping and you'll attach a silk thread between your jump-off and landing spots.
Draw a shape, any shape, out of these threads, and it will automatically fill in with a web.
Insects that fly into your webs will get stuck. This is your main goal in Spider: to find, trap, and eat all the bugs.
There are actually two ways to eat insects. One way is with webs, as just described. But other types of insects require tackling. Hornets must be tackled! Jump into them to catch them out of mid-air.
The number in the bottom-left corner is your Silk. Every thread you create costs 1 Silk. Eating insects
gives you Silk back. Don't run out of Silk! If you do, you'll have a few seconds before you starve. If you manage to eat
an insect before then, you'll save yourself.
Different insects have different behaviors and patterns. Learn them to figure out the best spots to build webs. In this
easy example, the lacewings patrol back and forth but the marshfly hovers more or less in one position.
If you build a 3-sided web in the right spot, you'll capture all these insects and earn more Silk than you used to
build the web.
That's one of the fundamentals of good Spider playing. You can build webs nearly anywhere, but you SHOULD build EFFICIENT
webs in places where you'll catch the most insects and keep your Silk from running out. Don't waste any threads!
Efficient doesn't always mean small. Sometimes a large, carefully-placed web will capture more insects and use up less
Silk than lots of small webs. It's up to you to figure out! Not even the game designers know the best webs to build.
There are dozens of environments in spider and countless combinations of insects depending on whether it is day or night,
rain or shine. The specific shape of the environment is a huge factor in where you can build webs,
and the insects you find give you goals for building them. It's very
flexible, and although Spider often feels like a puzzle game, many solutions are always possible. Replay levels to
try a different approach or to see what challenges await you at night or in the rain.
You only have to eat HALF of the insects to
proceed to the next level, so you can get pretty far with just these basic instructions.
However, the best spider gameplay, where you really have to
think and act like a spider, happens when you're going for high scores and conquering the leaderboards.
For that, you'll benefit from advanced gameplay tips. Read on!
The World of Spider
Just some of the challenges you'll encounter on your adventure.
SLIPPERY SURFACES - Have you ever seen a spider who tries to walk out of a bathtub but keeps slipping back? Slippery surfaces are
like that. You can't cling to them, and you can't anchor silk to them. You can tell a surface is slippery
by the fact that it is bright and sparkly. They're often in places that make you rethink how to build the right webs.
ENEMIES - Red hornets and fire ants can fight back. If they hit you, you will lose silk! Your best bet is to dodge their
attack, which confuses them, then strike back with a tackle. A ! above their heads means they are about to charge you,
and a ? means they are stunned.
LIGHTS - If you see a light switch, try jumping into it to turn it on. Moths and other insects are attracted to lights,
and also you'll be able to see better. Some switches do other things, too, like open hidden doors or allow you to enter secret codes.
STRONG INSECTS - Some insects, like Clusterflies, are so large they can break apart a normal web,
which will free all of the insects you trapped. It takes a STRONG web to capture one. STRONG webs are especially large.
You'll need to find lots of open space, and it usually takes at least 4 threads to build a shape big enough.
SMART INSECTS - Snakeflies are too smart to fly directly into your webs. You'll have to figure out one of the
other ways to capture them.
TOP DOWN AREAS - Some areas are seen from the top down, with your spider walking on the floor. You can't build webs in
these areas, but you won't need to. Instead find and chase all the ants. There are more ant types on floors than
anywhere else. Some must be tackled, some fight back, and there are other surprises as well.
WATER HAZARDS - You're more likely to encounter droplets and bodies of water when it's Raining outside. Water and spiders don't get
along very well. Best case water will block your progress, slow you down, or interrupt your jump. Worst case you might drown!
So don't jump into any water, and that goes for fire and acid as well.
MOVING OBJECTS - A gear might turn. A secret door might swing open. If you anchored a thread to it, that thread will break.
If that thread was part of a web, you'll lose the whole web! It's a bummer, so think about that the next time you ruin some
poor spider's web in real life. Some moving objects are fun, and you can ride them like conveyor belts, or to find new areas.
Some moving objects are really dangerous, and can crush a spider that gets trapped in them. Watch out!
Advanced Gameplay
You'll need the patience, agility, and careful planning of a spider to succeed at advanced Spider
gameplay. We won't give it all away, but here's a primer to get you started racking up big points.
That number in the top-left corner is your score. It's fine if you don't care about score. Some players prefer to focus on
the story or just want to see what's next. Those players are why we made it easy to open the portal and proceed to
the next area. But players who pursue high scores experience a whole other side of Spider. We, the designers of the
game, believe this is the "real" Spider core gameplay.
Every insect is worth a certain amount of base points. This lacewing is worth 250, which is pretty low. Tricky insects like
Dragonflies are worth 2000, and who knows maybe super rare insects are worth even more, if you can find them.
When you eat your first insect on a web, the web multiplier appears, and it says "2x". That means the next insect you eat
on a web will be worth 2 times its base points. So a second lacewing would be worth 2 x 250 or 500 points. And eating that
second lacewing makes the web multiplier go up to 3x, so the NEXT insect will be worth 3 times its base points.
To get good at scoring, you must get good at using the multipliers. For example, say you eat 4 lacewings and 1 dragonfly
but you break your multiplier between each one. That's 250 apiece for the lacewings, plus 2000 for the dragonfly, for
a total of 3000 points. However, if you keep the combo going, increasing the multiplier between each one, and eat the
dragonfly last when your multiplier is 5x, you'll earn 250 + 2x250 + 3x250 + 4x250 + 5x2000 for a total of 12,500 points!
Obviously, this requires patience. Instead of eating insects as soon as you trap them, leave
them in your webs. Once you have a bunch of them, or when you're running low on silk, eat them all in one big web crawling
combo, proceeding from the lowest scoring insects to the highest.
Multipliers max out at 5x, so once it gets there you can eat insects in any order. The web multiplier will cancel if
you touch the ground (or a wall, ceiling, or object), but
it keeps going as long as you are in a web. You can also jump from web to web without breaking your multiplier combo,
as long as you don't touch the ground.
One advanced trick is to build webs in places where there are NO bugs but where they will help you jump between webs
without touching the ground. Whenever you see a bug worth 1000 or 2000 points, you should
figure out if it's possible to get it with a 5x multiplier. Sometimes these intermediate webs are the only way.
You can also build webs off the side of other webs. Here we see a big triangular web that only cost 2 Silk because the
third side is part of an existing web. Or perhaps you'll want to build a web in an open space where it doesn't seem possible,
but it turns out you can do it as long as you build some other web first.
Essentially, you have a lot of control over the environment, and using it wisely is important for scoring.
In summary, the strategy for web building insects is to build efficient and clever webs, trap as many bugs as
possible, and then eat them a big combo, being sure to eat the lowest value insects until your
web multiplier is maxed at 5x, saving the highest value ones until after that. This is always easier said than done! It will stress your Silk resource,
causing you to get dangerously low. In some cases, you may realize you're going to run out of Silk before you trap all
the insects, so make a plan about which to get first and which to save for a future combo. Lastly, leaving lots of bugs
in webs can be dangerous in situations where strong insects or moving objects can break your webs, freeing your prey.
That's for webbable insects only. There's a separate multiplier for insects that you tackle, like hornets, ants,
and houseflies. It works in a very similar way. The first bug you eat brings it to 2x, then second to 3x, until it maxes
out at 5x. The tackle multiplier will cancel if 10 seconds pass without you eating a tackleable insect, but every insect
you tackle will reset it back to 10. The general strategy to maximize score is an action-packed feeding frenzy where you
get started with the lowest value insect, working your way up to 5x like normal, and then proceed to track down every
tackleable insect in the entire level. If your timer runs out, you can take a break, but otherwise you should eat them all
while you have that 5x going.
Your spider is extremely hungry and will always eat any edible insect it comes in contact with. Often what happens is
that you'll accidentally slurp up an ant or tackle a hornet, at which point you have to decide if you're ready to go after
the entire level. You'll wind up on more impromptu feeding frenzies than you'd hoped for. Be prepared for sudden action!
Silk starts at 12 and maxes out at 20. This max is one of the only reasons NOT to consume the tackleable insects
all at once. In some levels where having as much silk as possible is of utmost importance, you may break off a
feeding frenzy at 20 and then use some of that Silk to build webs, saving the remaining tackleables for when your
Silk gets low again. Sometimes a similar strategy applies to long web combos, where even though it loses you potential
points for now, eating some of your trapped insects allows you to build more webs, which earns you greater
points in the long run.
There are rumors that some insects can be either caught in webs OR tackled, which would be pretty cool because then
you could choose which multiplier to apply them to. If such a thing is possible, it's probably hard to do reliably,
which means you'd wind up improvising. That's just speculation, of course.
Building webs earns you a little bit of points. Well, actually, building webs with MANY sides, up to 10 sided, can earn you
quite a few points, so it's something to do with your suplus silk when all the insects are eaten and you're ready to
leave the level. Also, your web multiplier applies to the points you earn from building webs, so you can get up to 5x the
normal points for building a web. But that's weird, how do
you build a web without touching the ground? And how do you make a plan than involves having a multiplier going and
also being in a good position to build large webs!? Sounds hard.
Lastly, it's important to explore levels in all possible conditions:
Clear Day, Clear Night, Rainy Day, and Rainy Night. Each one offers different challenges, a different mix of insect types,
and different opportunities to max out your score. Some levels are balanced such that every condition has roughly the same
amount of points possible, but in other levels one of the conditions dominates. That doesn't make it the most fun, however,
as the other challenges might be just your style. Lastly, not even the designers of the game know for sure what the high
scores are, so you may surprise us! You probably will!
Thanks and we wish you good luck in your quest for the topmost positions on the per-level leaderboards!