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Spider Web
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About the game
A spider sits in the middle of a big grey web, and the web is busy. Bugs fly across it in jittery paths, and a fly swatter keeps coming down from above. The spider can crawl anywhere on the web and shoot a short strand of silk in the direction it is moving. A bug caught by the silk is stunned for a moment; crawl over it while it is still dazed and the spider eats it, gaining health and points.
Health is the green bar at the top of the screen, next to the level and the points. Bugs that bump into the spider while they are still flying nibble a bit of it away, and a hit from the swatter takes a big bite. When the bar is empty, the game is over. Collect enough points and the next level begins with a new colour scheme, faster bugs and a busier swatter, while the background tune picks up the pace. There are twenty levels in all.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 2600: a new game by an independent developer for the 1977 console, not a commercial release. D Cooper Dalrymple wrote it in 6502 assembly, starting in 2018, and finished this version in 2022; he also makes physical cartridges of it. It runs here in Stellerator, an Atari 2600 emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play, then press Space on the title screen.
Two people can share the spider: start the game with B (the second joystick's button) instead of Space, and the first player moves while the second one aims the silk with I J K L, without needing the button. There are no save states on this platform; P pauses the game. A gamepad works too.
Controls
| Key | Atari 2600 | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys / WASD | Joystick 1 | move the spider |
| Space or V (with a direction) | Joystick 1 button | shoot silk; start a one-player game |
| B | Joystick 2 button | start a two-player game |
| I J K L | Joystick 2 | aim the silk (two-player game) |
| F1 / F3 | Left / right difficulty switch | change the speed settings |
| Enter | Game Reset | back to the title screen |
| P | — | pause |
A few things worth knowing
Stun first, then eat. Touching a bug that is still flying hurts you; touching a stunned one feeds you. Shoot, then move in quickly before it recovers.
Difficulty switches. Both switches start on B here, the easiest setting. Flipping the left one (F1) or the right one (F3) to A makes the bugs and the swatter faster, the right one more so. Change them before a game starts.
Keep an eye on the swatter. It creeps towards the spider before it strikes; keep moving and it is much more likely to miss.
Credits and licence
Spider Web was created by D Cooper Dalrymple, who wrote the code and made the graphics, melodies and sound effects. It is free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3. The ROM served here was assembled by FredyGames from the author's source code with the dasm assembler, and the complete source code is hosted alongside the game. The licence texts are linked from this page.