Webbed is a Platform Game about a jumping spider on an adventure to save her boyfriend after he is kidnapped by a bowerbird.
Rather than being centered on action or combat, the game is a physics-based Puzzle Platformer that largely revolves around weaving webs to solve puzzles by creating paths and dragging objects, while also including several optional sidequests, collectables and secrets to find, areas to explore and characters to meet.
The game was developed and published by Australian studio Sbug Games and released for PC in September 2021. Ports for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were later released in February 2022. Its page on Steam can be found here
, and the game's official website can be found here.
Webbed contains examples of the following tropes:
- Amicable Ants: The ants seen in the game, in addition to being technologically advanced enough to build machinery such as fuel pumps and furnaces, are friendly towards the spider protagonist and promise to help her save her boyfriend in exchange for help with fixing some of their machines.
- Artistic License – Biology: The main character is a spider whose abilities are weaving webs... and shooting laser beams from her eyes.
- The Cameo: The main character of the game Skatebird appears as the NPC who runs the skateboard minigame.
- Chummy Commies: The ants have a Soviet flavor to them, addressing the protagonist as "comrade" and having a few ants named similarly to famous communist philosophers.
- Distressed Dude: The male spider is captured by the bowerbird at the start, and his girlfriend is the protagonist who goes on a journey to save him.
- Effortless Achievement: The achievement "Cast-on" is awarded for weaving your first web, which is one of the first things you'll do in the game.
- Eye Beams: The spider can shoot beams from her eyes to push objects and take down no-longer-needed webs.
- Feathered Fiend: The Big Bad is a bowerbird who is portrayed as monstrous. Justified since the main characters are all bugs, and from their point of view, he is not only enormous, but also a predator.
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider: The heroine of the game is a cute jumping spider on a journey to save her boyfriend from a bowerbird.
- The Ground Is Lava: The aptly named "Floor is Lava" achievement is awarded for traveling 20 meters without touching solid ground (webs, twigs and vines are okay). Since the game is played from a spider's perspective, this is actually quite a long distance.
- Humongous Mecha: The ants are building a giant ant mech. It's no bigger than a bird, but it's massive compared to any of the bugs and it's the only thing capable of defeating the Bowerbird in direct combat.
- Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The game is mostly insect- and nature- themed. Then we have the ants building a Humongous Mecha ant that's massive compared to any of the bugs and is in fact the only thing that can overpower the bowerbird.
- Jump Scare: Just before the bowerbird makes his entrance in the final level, there is a jump scare complete with Scare Chord when his eye briefly appears through a hole in the wall.
- Land Down Under: The game takes place in a fantasy version of Queensland. The Big Bad is a bowerbird, a kind of bird native to Australia known for collecting colorful objects to decorate its nest (as the one in the game does), and the characters frequently use typical Australian expressions such as "G'day".
- Mechanical Insects: One of the game's main quests is to help the ants build a giant mechanical ant to help fend off the bowerbird.
- No Name Given: Most of the characters in the game are not named, including the spider who is the main character. Until the end credits, when her name is revealed to be Buddy.
- Rule of Cool: The player's spider has inexplicable eye beams, while the ants somehow have the technology to build a proportionately giant ant mech.
- Shown Their Work: The game's setting is obviously cartoony and semi-fantastical, but there are various bits of real-world biology referenced throughout.
- Male bowerbirds build elaborate structures and decorate them with colorful objects.
- The game's "dance" animation is based on jumping spiders' courtship rituals, where they raise a pair of legs and wave them rhythmically.
- Specifically, the main character and her boyfriend are peacock spiders. The female is mostly gray, while the male has long iridescent hairs on his back.
- The hide-and-seek champion is a golden silk orb-weaver. This is a family of spiders noted for their webs' yellow-orange tint.
- Wolf spiders care for their babies and carry them on their back. When you're the one carrying those babies, they visibly crawl over your character's sprite. note
- Bees gather pollen to make royal jelly, and a young larva needs to eat large amounts of jelly to grow into a queen. When that new queen is ready, she leaves the hive to start her own colony elsewhere.
- Verbed Title: Webbed.
