A Webbing Journey Preview

What is the point of spiders? Well, they help with your work projects, repair broken plushies, and clean your kitchen floor! Bet you didn’t know that! Unless you’ve played A Webbing Journey, currently in Early Access, then you’ll be like “well duh”...

This title is a third-person cosy adventure through a house, where you play as an arachnid. Honestly, I bought it the moment I saw a gif of a spider attaching a web to a ceiling fan and swinging across a kitchen, because I love both games with grappling physics, and those where you play as something small in a normal-sized place.

Your character is new to the house, and will encounter spiders who have tasks for you to do in each room. Don’t worry about completing them in a timely manner, or even remembering them, as you’ve got a To Do List which can be brought up at any point to remind you. These include things such as building a model house, putting balloons in a tipi, washing dishes, and fixing a printer.

As well as spinning webs (any size) and swinging on a thread overhead like some kind of Spider-Man, you can walk on any surface and jump. Your normal webs will disappear when you let go of the button, but you have construction options. One will send a line between where you’re standing and whatever you’re aiming at. The other two will attach a line between two points — one lets you send multiple strings from one thing to other things, and the other will let you string objects together.

Using all of these in conjunction is how you’ll accomplish most tasks, but the most important one is being able to attach things to yourself. As I said, when you let go of the button, an ordinary web will disappear. However, if you press another button, it will instead attach the item to you, allowing you to “hold” things while you swing across a room.

Each level is filled with doors and drawers that you can open — you rarely need to — so there are plenty of hidden “buttons” for you to spend in the shop. You can buy hats, shoes, and facial accessories, though the shoes don’t work when you switch on Arachnaphobia Mode, which turns the spiders into sticky balls. Or maybe you want to look more like a spider, so you can dial down the fluffiness and add an abdomen.

The game currently has three levels and a bunch of sandbox levels. Admittedly, I didn’t spend much time in those, but that’s not the game’s fault: I personally don’t find sandboxes interesting. Each room is distinct in shape and content, so don’t expect a laptop in the kitchen, or a fridge in the kids’ room, and there are no limits on how many webs you can deploy, so everything can be tackled however you like!

A Webbing Journey is expected to get more levels before release (they’ve unfortunately fallen behind on their roadmap), so I’m looking forward to coming back to play more. It’s currently available on Steam, in Early Access.