I used to think arachnophobia was overblown. Okay, you’re scared of spiders, whatever, get over it. Then one day, many years ago, I saw what happened when my boss at the time—a genuine arachnophobe—came within inches of touching a small spider as he was walking through a doorway. It was as if someone had mashed up an Olympic 100 meter dash, John Travolta’s most frenetic disco moves, and the inhuman noises of a mutant demon from the fifth dimension tearing through the fabric of reality as it crawled into our own world, and then stuffed it all down the throat of my very surprised, very distressed pal—all of it over a spider you could barely see without squinting. And on that day, I was convinced: Okay, maybe there is something to this arachnophobia thing.
Respect for arachnophobia has also taken on greater importance in videogames in recent years, as a growing number of games either launch with or add arachnophobia modes, accommodating players who simply cannot tolerate being in the presence of spiders. Grounded was one of them, and speaking to Polygon, game director Chris Parker confirmed that Grounded 2 will have an arachnophobia mode as well.
The arachnophobia mode in Grounded 2 will be based on the one established in the first game, which according to PC Gamer’s favorite spider-hater Mollie Taylor is quite good: It actually offers a slider that lets players adjust how spider-like they want the in-game critters to be, to the point that they can be turned into near-literal balloon animals.
Grounded 2 has “more challenges,” because spiders can be used as mounts. Parker said applying an effective arachnophobia mode to a rideable spider is “tricky,” but probably not as bad as you might think—and it sounds like the team is largely sticking with what worked in the first game.
“We really just go onto the skeleton and put cute-looking spheres where claws and eyeballs and abdomens used to be,” Parker said. “And as long as we take it far enough away from that eight-legged insect, that seems to work for people. So yeah, it’s not all that crazy.”
For the benefit of players who aren’t full-on arachnophobes but still get a little creeped out by the hairiest, hissy-est eight-legged crawlers, Parker also said developers at Obsidian are careful not to go too hog-wild with its in-game creations. “I think in general, we try to just push that as hard as we can, and at some point we go, ‘Oh, I think we pushed this too far.’ And we do bump into certain assets that we’ve created where we’re like, ‘Well… I don’t really know. Let’s take that out.’ Or, ‘Let’s put it in there, and see what user research has to say about it.’
“Now that we’re finally able to talk about the game and we’re going into early access, we can talk to the community about it. But those are the kind of conversations that we want to have with the community out there, see what they have to say about it too.”
Grounded 2 is set to launch into early access on July 29 and is available for wishlisting now on Steam.
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