(Writer’s Note: To learn more about Spider Lily, read our first interview at PAX East 2025 right here.)

Ed: Hello, everybody. This is Eddie V. from Boss Rush Network, here at PAX East 2026. I’m here at Spider Lily by Falsework Studios, and they have an update about the game. Now, if you didn’t read our interview, what are you doing? Visit bossrush.net to read our interview with Sofi and the team about this wonderful game. ‘Cause everybody, this update is beyond good, the way that it looks. I’m here with Yuehao. Hello, how are you?

Yuehao: I’m good. How are you?

Ed: I am doing well. How has PAX East been for you?

Yuehao: It’s been busy, but it’s been amazing.

Ed:  So, when we saw Spider Lily last year, it was in a different state than it is now. It was the beginning of development. Can you tell us where the game is now, in terms of development? 

Yuehao: Yes, so what we’re showing at PAX East this year is a 20 to 30 minute demo of Spider Lily. That’s a fresh new project that we’ve been working on for the past six months. It was a very small team of five people. Yeah. 

Ed: Yeah. It looks very colorful. Now, for people, just in case they don’t understand the premise, can you explain the premises of the game to them?

Yuehao: Of course. So, Spider Lily is set in the purgatory world. You play as a 12-year-old girl who has died, and you meet a blind fish whose eyes are just being pecked out by ravens. You go to stop it, and when you do, you two are bonded together.  You have to navigate this purgatory world together. We imagine the purgatory world as a wastewater treatment facility. So there are different stages in how the facility purifies the soul, and the ultimate goal is that you and the fish are escaping this purgatory world together.

Ed: Now with this update, it’s very colorful. We have flowers, we have water, and a stamina bar for the fish. Can you tell us some of the gameplay ideas that are implemented in the game? 

Yuehao: Yes, so we have a core escort mechanic, and basically, you guide the fish with a little drum, and there are also environmental puzzles in the world. 

Ed: Everybody, we also have Matt. Hello, Matt.

Matt: Hello. I lost my voice at PAX, and all I got was this t-shirt. (we both chuckle)

Ed: So, Matt, with Spider Lily, how are you feeling with the game? Has there been good feedback from players? 

Matt: Yes, we’re getting a lot of great feedback. One of my favorite things to overhear that I’ve been hearing a lot today is people seeing it and saying it reminds them of Shadow of the Colossus. That’s nice to hear. 

Ed: That’s really good. I was discussing how great the game looks and inquiring about its gameplay elements. Here at PAX East, how has the reception been? Are they actually solving puzzles? 

Matt: It’s been great. I think that one of the most satisfying things as a game designer is seeing people enjoy your work because you go through so many iterations, and watching people try and fail to play a game the way that you’ve intended it to be designed gives you an idea of how people play games. At this year’s PAX, we’ve seen a lot of people complete the level or make it pretty far in it. We’ve also gotten a much better sense of the timing of the level. We were telling people we booked 20-minute slots for the demo this year, but I think the completion time is a little more like 20 to 30, 20 to 40. Yeah, so it’s nice to see that because, you know, we also, we’re still figuring out what the full scope of the game is going to look like. It’s nice to see that it’s not as fast as when I’m playing it.  I can run through the level in like 10 or 15 minutes. So it’s great to see that. That’s a good piece of feedback for us, for sure. 

Ed: So I gotta ask you both, have you had any creative dreams, like when you’re sleeping, something comes to mind, and you say, “I gotta get up and write this down!” Has that happened through this creative process? 

Yuehao: I would say yes and no. Sometimes I think about these creative issues constantly in the back of my head. Sometimes I’ll be like, “Okay, I see a vision here.” For example, for the main facility level design, I really wanted to make it feel like you’re entering a temple. It’s designed like an industrial facility. I wanted to do both, and I think we played with a lot of different visual styles and looks for quite a while, but then at some point, I realized, “Okay, maybe I should, in my head, just think of it as an existing garden or temple that’s being repurposed as a facility. Once I had that thought, I was like, “Okay, it makes things just a lot easier.” 

Ed: What about you, Matt? Any ideas, creative ideas? 

Matt: Well, the other night, I definitely had a lot of dreams about gaming laptops, but that might have been more based on trying to get a demo unit for PAX. I say that kind of as a joke because that’s not a creative dream. It’s interesting you bring up dreams because we definitely think that the game is sort of set in a liminal space, like purgatory, and it invites that feeling of surrealism that one can kind of see how it’s drawn from a dream world or a collective unconscious. I think a lot more of the creative process for me as a collaborator and co-director with Yuehao, which I’ve done with a lot of the artists that I’ve worked with, is about almost drawing from their unconscious.

Yuehao creates so much of the beautiful art that you see in the game. The art was also in the last version last year. The process between us has also been about me looking at those things, interpreting them, and then writing storylines and coming up with the ways that will support that artwork in this world. 

I’m actually surprised to say that I don’t know. I think there are different types of creative people, but game design feels, at least where I’m at right now, working on our first game, like a very conscious process. So maybe one of the ways that I access the unconscious mind is almost through Yuehao, and it’s through the dynamic between the two of us. 

Ed: As you two are developing the game, are you still envisioning this purgatory? Are you still coming up with ideas for the purgatory? Or is there something that’s already planned and just waiting for it to be designed in the future? 

Yuehao: We imagine the purgatory world, as I mentioned before, is like a wastewater treatment facility, and there are three stages. The first stage is the facility that separates the souls from their physical attachment. The whole game is about the idea of attachment and letting go of those attachments after you die. That’s why there are all these broken vessels and vases in the world. In the second stage, you enter the inside of the facility.

Matt: That was a big turn in our thinking about it. It was a consequence of using the fish. We really started to realize that the fish implied this idea of two separate paths. There would be the waterways, which you can’t get into, and then the land, where the fish is going to die if it’s out of the water for a little while.

As we started to think, well, what’s a way of thinking about this? In Buddhism, different stages happen when somebody dies. I can’t remember all the details right now, but we’ll add them in.  There are five stages. In our world, as Yuehao was saying, we’re imagining this wastewater treatment plant as having three stages. Removing first the material from the immaterial. So in this case, you can see it in the demo, the things that people were buried with. So, vases or precious objects. That kind of turns them into just an immaterial soul. 

I was thinking a lot about what’s heavier than material. If you remove the material, what’s the next heaviest thing that a soul carries with it? I thought, well, maybe it’s memories, right? That’s probably the next thing, actually, and it came from my conversations with Yuehao. We were talking about what things you’re most afraid of losing when you die, and Yuehao said, “Well, I would be afraid of forgetting, you know?” 

I went, “Okay, well, that could be the second stage.” And instead of being a separator, the machinery will be more of an irrigation, natural irrigation, a root system with trees that grow inside of an arboretum inside of this facility. It’s a forest of memories. So all the memories of the dead are feeding these plants.

Then I thought, well, if memories are already lighter than air, but they’re heavier, what’s that next thing? In the final stage, it’s evaporation as a method of purification. So that’s the final stage before the souls go on to their next lives. It’s the evaporation of identity. I tried to think of, well, what is even deeper than a memory? Identity! I think of it as being like your family tree. These things are encoded in your genes, like who you are of a sort of less personal level. It’s that last stage where the evaporation of identity happens, and then the soul is ready to pass on to their next life.

Ed: I gotta say, because I’m just going to say this to everybody, I’m sorry, I’ve seen some exclusive artwork. I must say, I need picture frames of them. Like, I just saw them. 

Matt: We can send them to you. Some of them are online already. 

Ed: Oh, can we purchase them? If you’re making prints or anything, I would love to purchase them and put them on my wall because this is beautiful artwork. Maybe that’d be a way to help support the game. 

Matt: Well, we can confidently say that, because we will be launching a store as one of the ways that we hope that we can let people support the game, because we have made a lot of art. I appreciate that. 

Ed: Oh, I will be at that store buying some good art. Oh, I will be supporting. Boss Rush crew and community, support these guys. When the merch drops, we will let you know. Pick it up. 

What I love is what you all are doing, because a lot of indie games handle death and purgatory in their own way. Games like Gris, Rime, and now Spider Lily. It’s more of a big world, and you all are handling it so well. Definitely just the way that it’s looking. There’s one part in the game that I’ve seen where if you put the fish on a statue or you hold it in your hand, your fish stamina bar goes down. That’s because you’re trying to solve puzzles and everything. When you put it in water, the stamina bar goes up. If the stamina bar gets too low, the screen gets red around you. Is that an indication that you all thought of putting in that you need to let the player know that if you run out of the stamina bar, things might not be good for you?

Matt: Yeah, well, Yuehao can also talk a little about it, but I’ll just say quickly that one of the things that stood out a lot to us last year was that the beautiful music that was composed by Chris McKelway was really brought up. A lot of players were playing the game, and because it was so immersive and open, they loved the music. That’s always been an aspiration of mine as a sort of creative technologist to work with sound interactively. So when the player is running low on that stamina, they’re not only seeing this visual thing where the world is getting… desaturated, less color, and this red pulsing is happening, but there’s also a music cue for it. What we really were thinking about as we were designing the experience is what’s a loop that can feel very sensual and engage multiple senses that you’re going through over and over again. 

Yes, I think to indicate to people that they’re in trouble or danger, but also something that it gives them some feedback, some meaningful feedback that fits within an artistic experience. 

Ed: So music is going to play a part in this game and hopefully, the rich story in the future. Do you guys think you’ll release a soundtrack?

Matt: Absolutely, yes. We recorded a lot of music already, and there’s more to come. What you’re hearing in the current demo is like three out of 50 tracks. So we’re definitely trying to bring a lot of music into the game.

Ed: Yuehao, have you heard the music? Has that helped you create or helped you envision some of your creative ideas? 

Yuehao: Yeah, I love the music. We’re definitely working with our composer, Chris, very much as a collaborator. So yeah, he makes the composition while he watches the game. Then we work with the music that he composed. 

Ed: Has it made you emotional with some of the tracks?

Yuehao: I love it. There’s one melody I just love.

Matt: Chris is really, in a way, the third collaborator in the piece. He’s been with the project the longest as well. We’ve been playing music together for 10, almost 15 years. We’ve performed the game live with Chris. So we’ve done a live soundtrack where Yuehao is playing through the demo, and we hope to do more events like that as well on an artistic front. 

Ed: Are there any vocal tracks, like any choral or anything? 

Matt: There is actually! We did record it, but it did not make it into this demo. We recorded a choir that would be the sounds of the souls in the water. So we’re still integrating it. We would love to bring more voices in. I think having some vocal arrangements is very important. 

Ed: I’m sorry, my soul has just gone to purgatory to go hear this music, the score. Well, that is so good. Well, just to wrap this up, any final words? Where can people find you guys? How can they support you? Also, is there anything that you want to let the Boss Rush community and readers know? What can they look for in Spider Lily, or anything?

Matt: Yeah, we really appreciate Boss Rush Network. We were honored to be named a hidden gem of PAX East last year. That was a real boost to us. So we definitely love Boss Rush. Where you can support us and show us love, right now, we launched our Steam page at PAX, which we’re very happy about. So keeping those wishlist numbers up is something that we hope to do. We’ve been seeing good numbers so far, but we’d like to keep drawing people there. We have a mailing list, and we’re hoping to bring a Discord out at some point, but for now, we’re sending our updates through a mailing list. They’re very intermittent, and you can find them at spiderlilygame.com. Stay tuned for more because there’s more to come. So the mailing list is one good place, the website, the Steam page, and hopefully the store soon. Yes. Maybe a Kickstarter. We would like to launch a Kickstarter in the absence of any other, and that may be a good way to support us. We don’t know if we’re going to do it or not. 

Ed: Yuehao, any last words or anything? 

Yuehao: I am really happy about where we’ve achieved so far. We believe in the project a lot, and we really want to bring the full version to the world. So yes, please wishlist us on Steam, and join our mailing list. Any support is very appreciated and important for such a small indie team like ours. 

Ed: Yes. Can we expect to cry throughout the game, because I know I’m just having a feeling the ending is gonna be just so emotional, because i feel like this game, even though it deals with a lot of things. It deals with Purgatory. I feel the ending is going to be so emotional whenever the game releases that people might relate to it. It might feel like something that they can believe that video games can make you cry and make you feel emotion. Are you excited about that? To have players experience this game, and even though it might make them cry, they get to see the expression, the passion that you guys have placed into this game. I know you’re not trying to make people cry, but how would you guys feel if people said that this game made me do this and that, and I’m so happy it was made and everything? How do you guys feel about that? 

Matt: I think that crying is a form of emotional release. It’s cathartic. It often happens when you experience something that feels true. I definitely think that our great aspiration with this game, or what’s always been my North Star as the lead writer of the story and also as a co-director of the gameplay, is figuring out a way of making narrative games. I have a storytelling background and a performance background, a music background. These are the things that I’m bringing to making games. A lot of emotion for me comes from music, so we know that we can bring emotional experiences to players that way.

This core mechanic of picking up and dropping the fish reinforces this attachment to the fish. We’re designing the story to give the players the idea that I would like more than anything for players to understand when they complete this game is that there are two parts of every single human being. One part is passive, receptive, and at peace with the world, and another part of yourself is a part that wants things and is attached to things. If people can see those two parts of the game, the lost soul and the fish, as one person, then I think we’ll have achieved our goal. Hopefully, that will be something that’s meaningful to them and helps them in their everyday lives. That is our goal for sure.

Ed: Can you tell us about this handheld version of Spider Lily?

Matt: Well, we have to give a big shout-out to our incredible team, and the full credit list is visible on the website. We want to give a big shout-out at PAX East 2026 to Felix Resenson, the solo developer of the Game Boy game. I think that they definitely merit a shout-out on their own, because we worked very collaboratively with an amazing small team on the Unreal version, but the Game Boy Studio demake of the game has been such a huge part of our presentation at PAX this year that I want to highlight that as, you know, Felix is very much an artist in the same spirit of our studio and seeing their work draw so many people. People have been asking us how they can get the Game Boy version. So now we’re having to think about how we can produce the full version of the game as a Game Boy version. That’s kind of the best outcome. I just wanted to give a shout-out to Felix and the rest of the team.

Ed: Is there any new snack that we should know about?

Matt: Okay, so the first thing that comes to mind when I hear this is that this is a huge tell on Yuehao and me because we both have different ways of eating and snacking, but somehow those Chocolate Peanut Butter Perfect Bars. have become the point of unity between Yuehao and I as like a sweet treat that we can eat during the day. Combine it with a banana and you basically have a full meal. 

Ed: Okay, I have to do that. 

Yuehao: Have you had it before? 

Ed: Not yet.  

Yuehao: Oh, you gotta try them. In fact, I have one for you. It’s like eating three spoonfuls of peanut butter, but you know, we’ve all done that.

Ed: OH, THANK YOU!!! I’m going to save it because they do have bananas at our hotel. Oh my gosh. 

Yuehao: Yeah, this is the snack combo of the recommendation

Ed: Well, Matt and Yuehao, thank you so much, everybody. This has been Eddie V. for Boss Rush. Once again, Spider Lily, go support them. Get your Steam account open. Wishlist this game. Show them some love. Just check them out. Once again, when the merch store drops, we have to support. All right. With that, everybody, we’ll talk to you later. Bye.

Matt: Thank you!

Yuehao: Thank you!

You can wishlist Spider Lily on Steam. You can receive additional information by signing up for their mailing list right here.

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