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Sling for joy
Scout Reportis an irregular series of indie game recommendations from Sin Vega, offered first to RPS supporters. Today it’sWebbed, a joyful little 2D platformer about a spider.
PlayingWebbedseemed inevitable for someone who watches her ceiling spiders when she can’t sleep or finish an article. But within about a minute of playing, it became clear that it’s the kind of game that will bring joy to almost anyone. Webbed is immediately brilliant.
At 3am in a shared house Icackled, in a way some of the best comedies ever made haven’t made me do. I can’t remember the last time a game had me go from 0 to “this iswonderful” so fast. Perhaps I could complain that it’s not a simmy game about building effective webs and luring in food, but about bouncing around and gathering insect allies to fight the evil bird that spidnapped your boyfriend. But alas, I have a soul, and so I’ve delighted in solving physics puzzles to help the ants build a mech, hitching a ride on a friendly bee, and stumbling across a secret level that I’mstrainingnot to spoil for you, it’s such daft fun.
Webbed gets a tiny bit fiddly in the more puzzle, mechanical underground sections, as you pull things about and construct scaffolds to help fix the ants' machines. I got a bit tired of them and headed for the skies instead, where I was free to hurl myself around, and finally put the “how does a spider design a web” page I read in Bugs magazine when I was like 9 to use.
But it’s a forgiving game. You’re instantly restored to life with an audible pop when you swing into spikes. When you need to collect 20 pollen things there are several more than that, so you don’t have to tediously go back through an area that you gleefully flung yourself across. Webbed knows you’re here for the joy of splopping little webs about, doing clever tricks, and swinging through the sky, not for chasing perfection. It wants you to have a good time, and it damn well provides it.
