Title: Spider Zero
Developer: MairCODE
Game Type: PlayStation Mobile
Download: 7 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download 
EU Availability: Currently Unavailable
PSTV Support: No

We recently did some coverage on some card games coming into the world of the PlayStation Vita.  There are lots of card games out there geared towards playing with others.  Some, however, are more geared towards solitary play.  Be it on a table or on the PlayStation Vita, most people who were around with older PC games know the card game known as Solitaire.

As we stated above, we recently covered Solitaire coming to the PlayStation Vita.  This was in the form of the PlayStation Mobile game, Solitaire Zero.  This offered a very basic and simple game of Solitaire that attempted to mimic the old Windows Solitaire games.  It did a pretty decent job of it, too, but with a couple downer points that bring down the experience, as a whole.

Today, we have another Solitaire experience for you to have on your PlayStation Vita.  Last week, the developer who brought Solitaire Zero has brought another game, though this time it’s based on the more technical Spider Solitaire game.  Here is our official review of the PS Mobile game, Spider Zero!

Story

Due to this game not having any sort of plot or story, this section shall remain blank.

Gameplay

Spider Zero is like Solitaire Zero, but uses Spider Solitaire in its gameplay rather than normal, basic Solitaire.  The different here is that Spider Solitaire has you putting cards in order, but you can’t put them to the side.  You have to make all of them in the middle of the game board where all of the other cards are.  You also don’t draw cards to pick and choose for pulling over to the game board.  In Spider Solitaire, they are automatically thrown over all of your current cards and have to rearrange them later to make them work.

Aside from these enhancements, you still need to arrange the cards in order.  From top to bottom, the order is: King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace.  You have to figure these out by dragging them around with the touch screen to be in this order.  As soon as you have a full order, it will go away and add to your score.  The goal is to get everything in order until you have no cards left on the game board as well as the deck.

Spider Zero has the same options in the middle of a game to help you on your way.  There are buttons to undo a previous move, give up the current game, give a hint to what cards can be moved and where, and draw cards from the deck.  It’s mostly the same options as before, but just how it works is a little different since this is Spider Solitaire rather than normal Solitaire.

There are also some more options available to you as you play the game.  While you will always be playing Spider Solitaire, you have Easy, Normal, and Hard Modes.  Easy Mode has every single card the same suite, like Spades or Hearts.  This makes it so any 9 can go under any 10 and so on and so forth.  Then, when you get to the higher difficulties, more suits are given until Hard Mode where you’re dealing with all 4 suits.  This variety can help people learn the game, but just like Solitaire Zero, the game doesn’t tell you how to play the game.

The customization options are the same as before.  You can change how things look as far as the card face, card back, and background, as well as increasing the sound effects of moving cards.  The Draw 3 option isn’t there, but it’s been replaced with whether you want a timer to be on during a game.  All in all, though, there aren’t a whole lot of new customization options.

Since there are more difficulties in this game and Spider Solitaire is more complex, the game’s length is a little bit higher than normal Solitaire.  You still won’t spend a huge amount of time to do a single game, but you should expect a game to be at least 20-30 minutes, depending on your difficulty and level of skill.  All in all, though, it’s what you make of it.

Controls

Just like with Solitaire Zero, the controls for Spider Zero are strictly touch-based.  You won’t be using the physical buttons of the system at all unless you wish to pause in the middle of a game and not run down the timer while you’re doing something else.

The gestures are the same as before.  You tap the menu options or buttons to use them.  You also still drag and slid the cards across the screen to be able to move and stack them.  One thing that I did notice is that the controls are more responsive and less glitch.  The cards actually stay wherever you drag them to instead of popping back to their original spot.  This is a small improvement that does help the convenience as you move cards and think at the same time.

Presentation

Visually, there’s nothing different about the game.  Spider Zero uses the same gameplay engine that Solitaire Zero used.  Because of this, the cards still look good, though it doesn’t provide anything new, like new backgrounds or card colors and types.  It looks good, but it’s more of the same that we saw in this developer’s first game.

The unfortunate part of the presentation is that the developer still has yet to incorporate background music into the game.  When you play through the game, there won’t be any sound coming from your Vita at all unless you enable the sound effects/clicks.  This is very useful if you’re using the game in a very noisy area or at work, but not if you have headphones in or would like to listen to music as you play the game.