Spider
Every deal has a number, and that number is the same deal on any phone.
Every deal has a number, and that number is the same deal on any phone.
Spider lays 104 cards into ten columns, and you clear eight runs of the same suit from King down to Ace. The app keeps the rules and counts the things that are tedious to count by eye. That is all it does.
No subscription, no account. Your game and records stay on the phone.
A card lands anywhere one rank above it. But to lift several cards at once they must run down in the same suit. The whole difficulty of the game sits in the gap between those two sentences — a run you built in a hurry out of mixed suits cannot be moved again as a unit.
The stock and the eight cleared-run slots stand across the top at the same size as the cards on the board, so you can see where a dealt card came from and where a cleared run went.
The toolbar at the bottom has five buttons: Undo, Restart, New game, Records and Menu. That is all one thumb can reach, so everything else lives in the Menu — Open by number, Start by suit count, How to play and Settings.
One suit is eight decks of spades, so anything joins anything. Two suits adds hearts, four suits uses all of them. The more suits, the more often a run breaks.
There is no separate difficulty rating, because in Spider the difficulty is already in the rules. Records are kept separately for each count — a streak of five at four suits and a streak of five at one suit are not the same achievement.
Three axes. The day streak says whether you came today. The three suit-count panels give the current and best streak, the fastest time, the fewest moves and the win rate for each. The calendar shows where you have been.
Each month shows games won, games played and win rate for each suit count, and a past month with a win on every day is marked as a perfect month. Under the calendar, a by-month list gives each month one bar for the days you won. Tap a day you won to see that day's games. Under fastest time and fewest moves stands the deal that set the record; tap it to open that deal.
The table records only what happened. Win rates and streaks are never written down; they are counted fresh every time you ask. A summary can always be recounted, but a discarded game cannot be recovered, and a stored summary eventually disagrees with reality.
A row opens on your first move and closes only on a win. Counting games you dealt and abandoned would empty the win rate of meaning, and a streak says nothing if losses are not counted.
Every deal has a number. The same number with the same suit count always produces the same layout — not just on your phone, but on anyone's, because the app spells out its own shuffling rule instead of borrowing the platform's.
So a number is enough to hand someone the exact board you saw, and a deal that beat you can be written down and opened again later.
Tap the number at the top of the board for three things. Open a deal by number opens any other one on the spot (the Menu has it too). Share this deal sends the opening layout and its number as one picture. Play later keeps a deal you'd rather leave for now at the top of Records — New game won't pick it, and it leaves the list once you win it.
The last ten games you won sit at the bottom of the records screen. ▶ plays that deal again; Replay shows the moves you made, from the start — one move at a time, at 1×, 2× or 4×, or by dragging the slider. The win box has Replay too.
Tap a card and it goes somewhere sensible: same suit first, then the column with the longest run, empty columns last. Drag it and it goes where your finger says — every column that can accept the run lights up, and the one it would land in right now gets a brighter border.
Press and hold to join the two: it shows you where a tap would send the card, so you can drag instead if you disagree.
Cards you cannot currently lift are dimmed. How far up a column your hand reaches depends on the suits, and working that boundary out by eye means reading thirteen cards. All of this can be switched off — some people consider the counting part of the game.
Settings are in the Menu. Tapping New game is there too: it opens any deal, asks every time, opens a deal you haven't won, or goes in order from #1. None of them picks a deal you saved for later.
Everything a first-time player needs is on a single card. Nothing to page through, nothing to skip, and it reopens from How to play in the Menu whenever you want it.
Including the rule people meet by surprise: you cannot deal while a column is empty. An empty column is the most valuable thing on the board, and the rule keeps you from burying it under a stray card.
Your day streak continues as long as you win one game a day. If you missed a day anyway, you can fill it later. Tap an earlier day with no win in the Records calendar, watch one ad, and win the game that opens: the day is filled, and it counts toward your day streak like any other day.
Every win shows the last seven days as a band. If there is a day to fill, "Fill an empty day" points to its spot on the band; if missing yesterday broke your streak, it says "Fill yesterday" instead. And if you have played the deal before, the win box compares this win with the earlier ones — "First win on this deal, on try 3", or a new best on moves or time.
The ad plays only when you choose to fill a day. Never while you play, and never when a game opens.
King down to Ace in one suit, and those thirteen cards leave the board. It happens eight times in a game, and it is the only progress you cannot undo.
So they do not vanish in a single frame. The thirteen cards fly to their slot one at a time, and the sound climbs a rung as each one lands. The King leaves first and the Ace settles last, so the order they fly in is the run itself.
Sound follows the phone's silent switch and never interrupts music someone else started. There is also a switch for it in Settings.
Free. No subscription and nothing to buy. The only ad is the one you choose to watch to fill a missed day.
Games and records live on the phone. There is no account. To see how the app is used it sends the names and numbers of things that happened — which deal you opened and with how many suits, whether you won, in how many moves and how long. The ad is served by Google AdMob. The privacy policy says plainly what goes where.
iPhone, iOS 15 or later. In twelve languages: English, Korean, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Russian, Turkish, and Indonesian.