Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon lets you play as a tiny walrus

Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon, Tiger Style's follow-up to Waking Mars and sequel to Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, has a hidden option that lets you play as a walrus.

"Spider looks awesome, but I can't play it because I hate spiders," was a complaint Tiger Style kept hearing about the first Spider game six years ago, said creative director Randy Smith in an email to Eurogamer.

"Today it's once again the most frequent one [concern] about Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon," he continued. "However, we predicted and planned for that, which is why we made it possible to play Spider as a walrus. That's right. There is an arachnophobe mode."

To do this players must unlock the tiny Odobenus Rosmarus skin, which you can do by entering the "save session" section of the Settings menu, selecting your current file, an changing your name to Rosmarus.

The next time you load the Estate Map the walrus skin will be unlocked.

So why a walrus, you ask? Here's Smith's goofy explanation that raises more questions than it answers:

"To the casual reader this will immediately make perfect sense. A jumping spider, a member of the Salticidae family, is known for being tiny, jumping a great distance, their colourful courtship rituals, and subsisting on insects. What animal has all those traits while looking nothing like a jumping spider? Why, that would be Odobenus Rosmarus, of course, except an extremely tiny one! The nimble walrus is capable of jumping 30 times the length of its body and also exclusively eats insects during the warmest months. Don't believe us? Just search for the hash tag #WalrusFacts! Sealing the deal is the fact that the walrus's scientific name translates from Latin to 'tooth-walking sea-horse.' If that doesn't sound like a tiny spider, nothing does."

I'd take this, and whatever else pops up under the WalrusFacts hashtag, with a grain of salt, but the cheat code unlocking the walrus skin? That's real. I've tested it.

Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon is out now for PC, Mac, Linux and iOS platforms. PS4, Vita and Android versions will follow.

For more on how to conquer one's arachnophobia, Eurogamer contributor Joe Donnelly investigated software designed to cure people of this plight.