A Spider to A Fly

is pretty good

An unnerving game that can be disturbing without needing jumpscares or constant monsters after you. The visual style is surprisingly unique; the use of downscaled photos for the environments definitely invokes the pre-rendered backgrounds of older games like Resident Evil. The in-engine lighting is also very useful for telling you where you can and can't go; if it's almost pitch black, it probably isn't important. Different colors of light seem to represent different things, like green for your house and red for the traumatic areas in Ian's memories he refuses to revisit. Other visual effects like film grain, splotchy dark overlays, and camera shakes also serve to enhance the atmosphere. Speaking of atmosphere, this game has a very strong one; the sound design and music both work wonders for making the gloomy environments feel real. Something that took some getting used to was the game's permanent lock at 24fps. This seems intended to make the game more cinematic, and it looks fine enough for the gameplay, but things like the UI elements and mouse cursor also being locked to this frame rate made it feel kind of unresponsive, especially since the mouse is the primary way you'll be interacting with things. After a while, I hardly noticed it, however. The gameplay can be incredibly rewarding at times; the feeling of cracking a puzzle yourself can make you feel like a genius, like using the screwdriver on the broken fuse without being told to. But sometimes the solution to something can be frustrating, like the green remote control that specifically states it is for a window shutter but is not, in fact, used for the locked window shutter of the glowing green building. Instead, it is used in a seemingly random different room you wouldn't think to look in without wandering throughout every room in the whole park. Things like the delay between dialogue and being able to move your mouse or interact with anything can make the game feel sluggish at times, especially in sections with a lot of dialogue. I personally noticed quite a few spelling mistakes throughout the game, but these hardly affected my enjoyment of the game or story, and I know people that didn't even notice them. Due to a bug in the game, it's actually impossible to do a second playthrough without completely erasing your save data in the game files. This seems like a large oversight considering the story actually makes a lot more sense after seeing how everything played out afterward. But the game is new, and this is something that will likely be fixed in the future. Achievements would be a nice addition to mark any little secrets you may be able to find and award you for completing the game (it ends rather abruptly, so it would be a good confirmation that it's over too). Overall, this game is very intriguing and worth a play considering its super-cheap price. I'm looking forward to patches that may quell some of the issues I had too.

A very tense psychological horror game. It was very interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat

短小精悍的心理恐怖视觉点击游戏，主角的超绝大衣鰥夫形象让我玩的时候想到好多角色，解密比较简单，美术氛围奇佳

'The Spider to the Fly' is a very old poem about a cunning spider who entraps a fly by means of manipulation and seduction so 'A Spider to a Fly' is a fitting name. My expectations were met, it was immersive and the Silent Hill influence is very welcome in the eerie atmosphere, visuals and music. A point and click that remind me of a smaller, darker 'Fran bow' which I also loved. And I've never played 'The Cat Lady' so I need to remedy that. The puzzles were not too tricky, except when I got stuck because I misread the type of key I had. It's dark and twisted and I liked that your character would refuse to re-enter the very traumatic areas. My fav puzzle was the 'Beetlejuice' moment near the crashed car. I do have 1 question though, why are Ians feet so tiny!?

Short and cool adventure game, with an amazing atmosphere. Gameplay is simple and hardly qualifies as a point and click adventure. Sure, you point and you click, but there’s really not much in the way of puzzles: you just walk around looking keys and other objects to unlock rooms and other objects. Story is okay, quite vague and typical guilt/regrets stuff. Didn’t care too much for it. The star of the game is definitely the presentation: graphics, sound design, and soundtrack are top notch and kept him hook for the whole (short) duration. All in all, a highly recommended exercise in style.