A physics-based game set in a fantasy version of Queensland, players control a peacock spider whose goal is to rescue her boyfriend after he is kidnapped by a bowerbird, with the help of other bugs.

Webbed is developed by co-developers Riley Neville and Noah Seymour, and features a colorful pixel 2D art style with procedural animations created in GameMaker engine, for both its player and non-playable characters that give them reactive and generated movement.

[4][3] From an interview with Checkpointgaming, Riley Neville explained the reasoning for the arachnid player character stating “If you’ve seen videos of peacock spiders doing their little dances, they’re incredibly cute.

It’s about a millimetre across in total, it’s a tiny little dancing, colourful friend and we want to show that sort of character in our game.”[5] Additionally, its other developer Noah, who has already made indie itch.io titles featuring spiders such as ‘A Mess of Legs’, notes a fascination and love for them “I just kind of keep falling down the rabbit hole further and further.

I’ve bought big books of the most documented spiders in Australia and love to take pictures of them in my backyard.”[5] Riley also showed an interest in accessibility for Webbed, spawning the Arachnophobia mode  which changed all the insects into blobs, for those on social media who still expressed fear at the bug aspects.

“The web mechanics are fun and fluid, with the swinging especially one of the game’s highlights – fanging through the bush like George of the Jungle is a really good time.”[3] Reviews on Metacritic focus mainly on its ingenious puzzle design that is balanced with its easy gameplay fluidity, with many noting a drawback of being ultimately short and sweet.