My Friend The Spider

god game

9/10 A little laggy, especially in the beginning, but aside from that, it's an amazing game and captures the reality of depression very well.

"My Friend The Spider" is a "more art than game" "experience" (and when you can't describe something as a game and you have to call it an "experience" instead, you know you're gonna have a bad time) that leaked from Itch (Itch has like one job, to contain amateur crap and thus lift up the average quality of the rest of the gaming world by keeping it locked down) where the developer pretends to be an expert in dealing with depression and mental health by suggesting you should lock yourself in a room with a spider, or something. It's a short, clunky amateur mess with what looks like more than one "borrowed" game asset. What do you do in the game? Nothing, seriously, it's 10 minutes of pretentious faux-mental healthcare. Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. The game is quite short, and can be run through in just 10 minutes. The lack of content here makes it hard to suggest it's worth spending the time to add to your library and download. Even though the game looks pretty bad (and decent visuals are a minimum requirement for any game), it looks like some or most of the game assets are stock/flipped assets. I mean, if you're going to shove an asset flip onto Steam, you might as well rip off/plagiarise decent assets. This is like going on a bank heist and stealing a pen and some loose change, or going shoplifting and just stealing a box of store brand toothpicks. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 4 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library? This is a "nope". While it won't necessarily cost you money, the time and hard drive space it requires could be better invested in one of the many higher-quality alternatives on Steam.

Moody and smart. A short yet personal story, that unravels itself click by click. Great ambience and musical arragements.

Игра "My Friend The Spider" — это удивительно трогательная и глубокая приключенческая головоломка. Она рассказывает нежную историю о взаимопонимании и преодолении страхов, где вам предстоит подружиться с маленьким паучком, чтобы вместе выбраться из загадочного дома. Геймплей построен на решении оригинальных физических головоломок, где вы управляете и мальчиком, и его пушистым спутником, используя их уникальные способности. Визуальный стиль игры просто восхитителен, а атмосфера наполнена теплом и легкой меланхолией. Это тот редкий тип инди-игр, который оставляет после себя светлое чувство надежды и напоминает, что даже в самых малых созданиях можно найти настоящего друга.

this kind of resonated with me. It is a short game that took my mind off of things for a few minutes, which I appreciate. I do have a fear of spiders which might have made the impact of a growing uncomfortable feeling bigger for me. Anyway, I enjoyed it, ofc it's nothing big or grand, but still nice and meaningful in its own way I suppose

It feels like there isn't really any plot or development. The game just has transition slide after transition slide. It represents depression as a spider, but it doesn't really address why or how the character overcomes it. Meh.

not worth a play in my opinion, and not really an expression of depression IMO. This was a person who had a bad week, and for some reason there's a spider. I will say this though, it's a pretty game that could have been much more than simple catharsis for the creator.