The spider’s dexterity is horrendous: it can move between vertical and horizontal in the blink of an eye. But more horrifying still is the thought that you are, in a way, trespassing upon its brain. Spiders and their webs are popular among advocates of ​“extended cognition”, a theory of mind which holds that we ​“off-load” thinking to external objects, such as shopping lists. We do not think and then act upon the environment, so the theory goes. Rather we think with it. Spider webs are an exquisite illustration of this: extruded from the spider’s own abdomen, they serve as both a sensing instrument and a way of storing information, each section meaning something different to the weaver.

We can liken the spider’s web as an extension of the spider’s thoughts to the ​“navigation mesh”, a popular tool in game development. Read: an invisible carpet draped across the world to indicate whether an entity can move somewhere. By simplifying that world into surfaces that can or can’t be traversed, the navmesh allows the AI-controlled denizens of 3D landscapes to navigate quickly and without sponging up too much computing power. In Hunt: Showdown, the navmesh stops the spider leaving its lair (having players duke it out over bosses in the open would have led to frustrating stand-offs, Schwarz notes), with ​“height spots” indicating where it can position itself on walls.

The spider’s behaviour is ​“built into” its environment, much like a real spider thinks with its web. It’s this entwining of spider and lair that makes it so terrifyingly elusive – dropping through a crack as you aim your shotgun, scurrying along the ceiling, beneath your feet and popping up behind you. The creature is also programmed to sense you within the building even when it can’t see you, as though tracing vibrations through woodwork. ​“It understands where there’s a safe spot, and it knows where the players are,” Schwarz says. ​“It tries to detect in advance whether players will be visible from a position, and whether this is a good place to linger before it dashes out again.”

Another game developer might object that there’s nothing remarkable about Hunt​’s interweaving of creature with lair. It’s essential to how ​“intelligence” is defined in such simulations, where every individual entity is designed around the others. But by introducing the figure of an arachnid, Hunt​’s creators have turned something commonplace about game creation into something sinister. The humble navmesh, here, is an apparatus of entrapment which somehow places you inside the alien mind of the creature you’re hunting.