Spider Pebble is the first game by Zamodo Interactive in the App Store. You play a happy little snow spider that needs to catch food in his web. The problem? He lives in the cold north forest, so his web has frozen. Help him clear out the ice from his web so he can get his 3 daily meals!
Spider Pebble Pros:
- Catchy soundtrack
- Visually pleasing
- Fun and challenging to master
Spider Pebble Cons:
- Lack of high scores, leaderboards, replay value
- Difficult and laggy controls
The purpose of the game is to throw pebbles and break the forming ice on the spider’s web. Once gameplay begins, you have 1:30 to toss pebbles up to clear the ice and make room for the insects that are roaming around the web. Throwing the pebbles requires you to swipe down the screen on your iDevice, moving your finger left or right to aim, and then releasing to toss the pebble. Each completed round of play gets the snow spider enough bugs to complete breakfast, lunch and dinner. The game is complete when you rack up enough bugs to suffice the snow spider’s daily appetite.
Zamodo Interactive’s Spider Pebble features very pleasing visuals and a catchy soundtrack, and the menu is easy to navigate and the narration is cute and satisfying. However, the controls for Spider Pebble are a bit counter-intuitive and take some time to get used to. As the primary goal of the game is to knock out ice from the web with tiny pebbles, precise aim is paramount. This is quite hard to achieve with the given pebble-throwing process, especially as the ice will inevitably form back on the web. Timing is important as well, since it takes time for the snow spider to grab his next pebble for tossing. This makes it hard to work quickly enough to make the bug quota in the 90-second time limit, especially if you throw a pebble too softly and it comes crashing back on your head. This will knock the spider silly for about 4 seconds until he’s ready for another pebble toss.
Although the game is challenging, Zamodo Interactive gives you some helpful Power-ups: Precision Pebble, Cluster Pebble, Double Pebble and Power Pebble. These will appear at random times during your ice-breaking process to help you bust out as much ice as possible. The Precision Pebble is especially helpful, as it allows you to aim at precise ice clusters. This teaches you how the aiming process works, and helps you become more precise even when the Power-Up disappears.
There is not much of an incentive for replay, as there aren’t leaderboards or any real variations once the game is beaten. You are also forced to start from the beginning (at breakfast) once you fail to catch enough bugs in time, regardless of what course you are on.
Zamodo Interactive’s first game in the App Store has a lot of potential, and has a very fun story and plot. We believe that with enough updates to gameplay, this could be a lovely little game. Although Spider Pebble still needs some work to become a solid game for the iDevice, don’t let it stop you from trying it out. This witty snow spider is still a delight, and breaks the ice at a 4-Dimple rating.
