Despite humans having a typical reaction to arachnids which involves screaming and climbing on top of chairs, the little eight-legged critters seem to be enjoying some modest popularity on the App Store just now.
There’s been
Spider: The Secret of Brice Manor,
Arachnadoodle, and now
Aractroid.
You play as a robotic spider, which you can move between junctions on the web, where the connecting lines intersect. The game is set on a series of flat areas resembling webs, which increase in complexity as you make progress.
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Some of the junctions contain coloured pylons. Walking into one will change your spider to the same colour, which then allows you to kill any of the same coloured bugs wandering about the web simply by walking into them.
You have to be careful, though, as wandering into a bug of a different colour will kill you in an instant.
Multiple successful kills build your power (and your points, which you need to amass to progress) so that new methods of movement become available to you.
When you’ve killed enough bugs, instead of just tapping the junction you want to move to you can slide your finger along the line towards it, sending you there at double the scuttle rate.
You can also jump between lines in this way, which allows you to avoid other coloured bugs, or even intercept those that are trundling along a nearby line.
There are various power-ups on offer, too, such as a bomb for clearing nearby bugs, which is activated by holding a finger down on your spider for a short pause.
DetanglerIt all sounds more complicated than it is, and in motion
Aractroid’s
gameplay is fluid and engaging. When vulnerable to bugs of a different colour, the enemy AI is that of dynamic obstacle rather than hell-bent pursuer, meaning that for the most part you play the role of hunter.
To this end, the challenge comes in tempering your own greed for points as the number of enemies and power-ups on-screen builds to a frenetic mix.
In marking one bug for death and taking a path via the correct coloured pylon, it is often possible to trap yourself on all sides. Forward planning and quick reactions are the key skills necessary for progress and makes for satisfying, sometimes exciting, gameplay.
The game is attractive enough, though it won’t turn heads, and the music is accomplished if less than soothing. There are no extra modes to speak of, but the clever pairing of individual leaderboards to each level’s selection screen - each containing both All-time and This Week filtering options - supplies more competitive incentive than many games with far more social options achieve.
It may be simple and it may have but one mode, but
Aractroid is one spider you definitely should not avoid.
