Idling away those lazy hours with your trusty smartphone as never been so much fun, as games developers get a better idea of what works on mobile phones and what doesn’t.

And what works is innovative, quirky, games which involve one sort of animal facing off against another, across some sort of soft platform-y type level with a pinch of puzzling thrown in. Nothing like being specific, eh?

It’s spider season, so it seems fitting that today’s App Of The Day is given over to an innovative, quirky, soft platform-y type game, with spiders.

Greedy Spiders

Format

Android

Price

Free/62p

Where

Android Market

The premise of Greedy Spiders is to save flies caught in the spider’s web. It is, shock horror, a turn-based puzzler. But don’t let that put you off, it isn’t turn based in the conventional sense.

Basically you have to cut the spider’s web to let the flies escape before the spider can get to them. Rather than being a race against the spider you have to out-smart him, which is why it is turn based. For every strand of web you cut, the spider advances a little closer.

It sounds simple and to start off with it is. You simply cut the strands of web and the spider can’t get to the fly. But what happens when you have four flies and two spiders?

Greedy Spiders soon reveals itself as a strategy game as you’ll have to think all your moves through. How can you force the spider down a particular path? Should you be cutting the web in front of the spider, or next to the fly? How do you keep both spiders at bay?

Cutting the web strands isn’t the only thing in your arsenal. As you move through the game you’ll get more options, like burning sections of web, but you never move away from that core need to cut the right strands at the right time to succeed.

Trial and error will eventually lead you to success if you can't see the solution in front of you. Some levels are simple, some are frustratingly difficult. But you do get hints (at a rate of one hint per 24 hours) if you get really stuck. 

Like Angry Birds, the results are judged in stars with three stars awarded for the most efficient solution, so there is a degree of replayability here. 

Greedy Spiders is original, challenging and slickly put together. It’s a great mobile game which we think hits the strategy balance nicely and is well worth downloading. The free game is ad supported if you can’t spare the 62p to buy it.