Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon Introduces a Real Twist on Time and Weather Effects

Over time, many games have attempted to be innovative, boasting gimmicks that would often become selling points. That's not to say all these games failed; in fact, some games have actually succeeded. For instance, Phoenix Wright had a feature where you shouted “Objection!” into your handheld’s microphone to progress the game. It was a successful and fun gimmick, but it possibly garnered attention to players from public eyes. Another example? The Sanity Meter in Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Seeping with psychological scarring moments, this Gamecube release relied on the Sanity Meter to twist your mind into a mess that potentially screwed you over. Your character would eventually become psychotic due to the amount of crazy, horrific happenstances occurring. However, you’d be witnessing and undergoing the gradual, strange effects, making it seem like you were going insane as well and forcing you to question reality.



Via PlayStation Blog, enter a new entry with an interesting, potential selling point: Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon. Currently in development for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, Tiger Style's Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon replaces your body with that of a jumping spider.



(Editor’s Note: Now I’m unsure whether I want this or not now, having a dislike for spiders. Maybe it would give me a new appreciation, however…)

This title features a unique system that revolves around weather and day/night cycles. Yes, we have day/night cycles and weather transitions in many games now, but what makes Spider unique is that the cycles and weather are based 100% on local time and weather. Yes, real-time weather. So, in case you don’t want to step outside or look through a window at all for the day, you can always boot up Spider to check the current weather.

In Spider, you wander about an abandoned estate as a spider—you can crawl onto walls and ceilings, leap around, and mold webs and threads into any shape to maximize movement. Time and weather mainly correlates to the hunting system: the appearances of various bugs are dependent on the time and weather of your location. For example, at night you will face lightning bugs, moths, and crickets. Mosquitoes and inch worms will surface the moment droplets splash onto the ground, while hornets buzz during the daytime.



Time and weather will affect the story and puzzles, but players can manipulate a weather device and time machine to hasten the process. Unfortunately, these tools can only be used once per real moon phase, which also affects puzzles within the game.

Fun fact: to obtain the platinum trophy, players need to understand how the actual moon phases affect the most secretive of puzzles.

To quote Creative Director Randy Smith on Spider's development:
 

“There have been a handful of video games, some of them really great, that use your real world information to create gameplay (Tearaway). We were inspired by those, but we wanted to push it further than we’d seen before.”

“Each of the game’s thirty levels can be played in all four possible conditions, each with a new combination of insects, secrets, and features, each with its own leaderboard to track which player has truly mastered Spider’s deep scoring system in that environment.”

The game is also cross-buy, so don’t worry about procuring two copies. Unfortunately, there has been no official release date announced, but according to the site, Spider will be arriving soon.



As we twiddle our thumbs in anticipation for a release date, check out the trailer below: