LogFAQs > #965932979

#48: Webbed

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/2/AAA-H0AADW36.jpg

I have, throughout my entire life, had a deep love-hate relationship with bugs. On the one hand, I like to envision myself a kind, gentle soul, one who sees all forms of life as equally deserving of respect and dignity, who treats a lowly ant or caterpillar as one would any other sort of living being, and who sees beauty in all others. On the other hand, AAAAAH BUGS. I am terrified shitless of bugs. I don't know where it began. I don't have any specific childhood trauma that I can think of. One time I thought a fly was in my room but it just turned out to be the mattress making a weird noise. One time one of my friends got stung by a bee and she cried. That's about it! But my brain just shuts down and throws a temper tantrum whenever there's like any kind of bug within like five feet of my person. Unless it's a butterfly, which my brain thinks are birds. No I won't be taking questions.

I've tried to offset this a little bit by trying to try to sympathize with bugs more on a personal level. For quite a while I adopted Vi from Bug Fables as my Discord avatar (with the les-bee-an pride flag behind her) and basically made bees my identity. Did it help with my fear of bees? A little! Similarly, I played a moth character in our weekly Starfinder campaign for about a year, and it's helped me calm down a little when moths get in the house. Instead of being forced to leave the room when this flappy little fucker gets in my space (moths are NOT birds), I can just go "oh, it's a little Kwibii!" (Kwibii was the name of my moth character. She both predated and outlived the TV service, Quibi.) Clearly, the next frontier to conquer is spiders.

Spiders are a little different. Bees, at least the nice ones we have here, mostly stay outside and keep to themselves, and moths are so helpless, nonthreatening, and easily manipulated that you can't help but pity them. But spiders are shaped like DANGER. They're weird little black lumps with tentacles that just randomly appear on the wall sometimes and I have to feel anxious about them all day. They appear inside the house a lot, from god knows where - cracks in the floor? Do they come out of the pipes? I don't even want to think about it. I hate it. It doesn't matter how much you tell me that spiders are harmless, or that they eat other bugs. My logical brain knows that. My emotional brain is not taking logical brain's calls. They MIGHT be dangerous, it thinks, and that is a perfectly valid reason to have a panic attack.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/3/AAA-H0AADW37.jpg

Does Webbed help with that? Well, I don't know. This game features a spider that looks more like... a jumping spider, kinda? They're tiny and have tiny little eyes. I think that kind of makes them more relatable? Most spiders just look like weird little alien automotons. And they don't shoot webs or have LASER EYES. Would that make spiders scarier? I don't know.

Webbed is a platformer, and definitely not a Metroidvania although it does have that vibe with its open world - you start with all your abilities so I'm pretty sure it does not meet the Berlin interpretation for a Metroidvania. You are a spider out to rescue your shiny spider boyfriend after he's kidnapped by a giant bird. You can use your webs like a grappling hook, Spider-Man style, to swing yourself around ceilings like Bionic Commando, or you can create bridges by affixing your webs to two points and walking over it like a bridge. And also you have laser eyes, but it's mostly for knocking objects around and breaking webs you've already set, although they do make a satisfying pew-pew noise. You use these abilities to navigate the world, helping other bug friends with their problems to rally them to go fight a giant bird. Class solidarity, I guess!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/4/AAA-H0AADW38.jpg

The freedom of movement in this game is absolutely amazing - swinging from everything never stops feeling incredible, and being able to place bridges wherever you want is immensely satisfying. Despite these powers, the levels are mostly kind - there are no enemies to fight, the game instead focused on navigating the world and moving objects around to solve physics puzzles, since you can affix objects to your webs as well. It's a very gentle world, with cute bug friends and not a lot of conflict, and I do appreciate that, but I also can't help but feel a little letdown that there aren't more opportunites to use your webs in creative ways - I'd love to see some honest to god platforming here. Like, yeah, there's plenty of spikes to avoid and a few tricky traps in the ant area, but it'd be really interesting to have to use your web-bridges and web-slinging to more effective use in actually avoiding danger.

Nontheless, it's a very cute and entertaining game that doesn't overstay its welcome, only lasting about 3 hours or so, maybe a bit longer if you look for everything, and I'd probably revisit it just because of how fun the character is to play. Did I mention it's cute? You have a dedicated dance button that makes you wave your little arms, and other bugs will dance back at you! That's marvelous. I think that literally every game on this list should have a dedicated button for dancing, even the ones where that doesn't make any sense.

Next up: I didn't have a funny bait-and-switch gag for this one so I'll change tacks and deliver an actual fact about the next game: The literal highest achievement possible in this game is to become a billionaire, purchase a guillotine, and then kill yourself with it.