![]() ![]() There were “about 20 contributors total and about 6 of those working nearly full time for long stretches, compared to Waking Mars and Bryce Manor being closer to 3 full time contributors,” Smith recalls. ![]() “The Shrouded Moon development experience was a big scaling up compared to Bryce Manor and Waking Mars, with a larger production, more collaborators, more platforms, the Unity engine, larger scope, more polish, and more features,” he reflects.Īnd while Smith tells us that Tiger Style “operates more like a production company which waxes and wanes in size depending on what work there is to be done at the time,” Shrouded Moon was the Tiger Style game with the biggest dev team. However, Smith and his team were keen to make Shrouded Moon more than your average sequel. With this attitude being a core tenet of the studio's philosophy, it's perhaps surprising that Tiger Style was interested in revisiting Spider in the first place. “Instead I like to think, 'What’s a game that’s never been made?'” The result is a game whose only real peer is its own predecessor, and that's exactly what Smith says he was aiming for: “The idea of starting with an existing game or genre and thinking, 'Okay, so what’s our take on this?' is a really depressing one to me.” ![]() “And compared to the more traditional narrative of Waking Mars, I feel back at home working with Spider’s unique storytelling technique, which is nonlinear and purely environmental, using a minimum of words and cinematics.” “I love crafting dark domestic dramas and sprawling mysteries,” he explains. And again, this is down to Smith's unique tastes as a creator. Simply put, it's more human than a game ostensibly about an arachnid has any right to be. Indeed, a large part of Spider's appeal is in the eerie and mysterious edge that runs through it, with a hauntingly evocative ambient storyline that unfolds throughout the game's abandoned yet lived-in environments. I love crafting dark domestic dramas and sprawling mysteries. ![]() “The fictional blend of 19th Century life, gorgeous domestic architecture, and the vivid natural world is heavily based on Vermont, the history-rich and absurdly pastoral state in New England where I grew up.” “I truly love working in the Spider universe, because it combines so many of my favourite things,” he says. For Smith, this is a deeply personal project. Speaking to Randy Smith, Creative Director at Tiger Style, the motivation behind a return to Spider so many years on quickly becomes clear. Spider's world is based on Smith's home state of Vermont It makes for an interesting case study, then - an indie studio staying true to itself and maintaining largely the same methods in the face of such an enormous shift in the world around it.Ħ years is an incredibly long time in mobile, and it's rare that we're given such a clear opportunity to reflect upon this. The market for premium games on mobile has shrunk, making the potential audience for a thoughtful, esoteric puzzler like Spider smaller than ever - regardless of its obvious quality, which culminated in an average review score of 91. 6 years, almost to the day, is how long it took for US indie Tiger Style Games to release its sequel to Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor.īut while that game was the critical darling of 2009, back when the App Store environment was more supportive of premium pricing, 2015's sequel Rite of the Shrouded Moon was released into a much changed world.įor Rite of the Shrouded Moon (priced at $5), the critical acclaim that propelled its predecessor to success would not necessarily guarantee any traction on the now F2P-dominated storefront. ![]()
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