Alien Spidy

Alien Spidy is a physics-based platform game. Players control the eponymous Spidy, an extraterrestrial spider, and navigate him through a series of levels that are filled with deadly obstacles. Spidy can run and jump, and has the ability to shoot a web, allowing him to grapple and swing from object to object within the environment. Interspersed throughout each level are a large number of orbs, which Spidy can collect to score points.

Finishing the level quickly, collecting a large number of orbs, collecting several orbs in quick succession, and finding score multipliers all increase the player's score for that level. Players can also lose points by dying, collecting certain orbs that decrease the player's score, or going for too long without collecting an orb. Players earn between one and five stars on each level, based on their score. Levels are grouped into several stages, including a forest, a pond, a cave system, and outer-space.

Alien Spidy has a minimal plot. The story follows the Spidy, a spider from the planet Aracnia, who has crash-landed on Earth during an attempt to rescue a lady spider, Virgi. Spidy must locate Virgi and collect pieces of his spacecraft in order to return to Aracnia.

On 8 November 2011, the game was announced in a press release, with Enigma Software Productions as the developer and Kalypso Media as the publisher. The press release indicated that the game would be released in the second quarter of 2012.

Alien Spidy was advertised as a PlayStation Vita game early in its development history, with Sony using gameplay footage of the game on the Vita at a presentation at Gamescom 2011. The game was never released on that platform, however. In an interview, Enigma Software CEO Daniel Parente claimed that the game was developed for all major platforms, and after bringing Kalypso Media on board as a publisher, the latter chose which platforms to release the game on, and when. The project manager at Kalypso Media for Alien Spidy, Andrew McKerrow, noted that the developer attempted to secure a publisher by pitching the game on a large number of platforms. In a separate interview with Daniel Parente, conducted in October 2012, Enigma Software's CEO called the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the game's lead platforms, stating that the game was "designed to be played with a gamepad".

Alien Spidy received mixed reviews upon release. At Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, the Xbox 360 version of the game received an average score of 55 out of 100, based on 19 reviews.[A]

The game's visuals were praised by reviewers. GamesRadar's Lorenzo Veloria opined that "Adorable characters, beautiful visuals, and upbeat music stand out as the high points of Alien Spidy". A large number of reviewers called the game and its characters "cute". While a few of the reviewers praised the game's music, Jeremy Peeples of Hardcore Gamer found that it lacked staying power. He noted, however, that the music could be muted without also muting the sound effects, allowing people to play their own music.