Ranking arachnophobia modes as someone who’s been terrified of spiders for nearly 30 years

I have been alive for *shudder* almost three decades now, and for pretty much all of that time I’ve been scared stiff by spiders. Please, keep your armchair therapising to yourself. Yes, I know the majority of spiders can’t hurt me. They’re just bros, chilling, with their way-too-many legs and eyes and… urgh. Anyway, I’m not a fan.

I am a fan, however, of videogames. And you know what videogames love to do? They love to shove freakin’ spiders into everything! Thankfully, most developers are kind enough to implement some sort of arachnophobia mode in order to shield my eyes and feeble, fearful brain from such atrocities.

That being said, not all arachnophobia modes are made equal. Some are genuinely fantastic, lessening the scaries without detracting from the immersion too much or leaning into the surrealism of it. Others are, to be frank, a bit naff. Fear not, for I’m here with my very professional opinion* on which ones are worth toggling on, and ones that may as well leave you diving into some exposure therapy instead.

*Depends on who you ask.

Grounded: 7.8/10

Starting off strong here, my arachnophobes-in-arms. There’s a few reasons I really dig Obsidian’s attempt at soothing my eight-legged fears: First of all, it’s on a scale, something which very few arachnophobia modes offer. In fact, I don’t think a slidable scale is anywhere else on this list.

Only a little scared? Cut off a leg or two and voila. Totally paralysed by the sight of one? Turn them into shiny round orbs of death. Admittedly, the shiny death orbs are somehow just as terrifying as their fully realised furry selves. Plus, changing their appearance doesn’t actually do anything to the terrifying hissing sounds they make when they’re trying to kill you.

Overall it’s a solid attempt though, and a much-appreciated one in a world where literally everything is bigger and more frightening than you.

Pro: Adjustable spider scale. | Con: They still sound terrifying.

WoW: The War Within: 9.5/10

Now I don’t actually play World of Warcraft—my MMO brainrot lies solely with Final Fantasy 14—but I had to include Blizzard’s incredible solution to the spider scares: Crabs. It’s crabs, baby.

Both are arthropods, sure. But as associate design director Maria Hamilton discovered, “Fundamentally, the best choice was crabs, it turns out. No-one was scared of crabs.” The team had gone down the route of trying things like your bog-standard spider leg removal, but ultimately found that “people don’t seem to have the same visceral reaction to the shape of a crab’s legs that they do with spiders.”

Y’know what, they’re right. I find The War Within’s crustaceans surprisingly endearing. The team even went as far as to look at all of the spiders within the game to carefully find the more appropriate crab replacement. Maximum effort for minimal scares on my part. If I was a regular WoW gamer, I know this is one I’d appreciate for sure.

Pro: Nobody is scared of crabs. | Con: Someone might also be scared of crab

Hogwarts Legacy: 6.3/10

Another arachnophobia mode that thinks chopping the legs off will solve all problems. Hogwarts Legacy didn’t even have an arachnophobia toggle when the game first launched, which automatically gets it docked a point or two. It was only after a mod started to ramp up in popularity that Avalanche Software decided to implement one itself.

Hogwarts Legacy turns its spiders into two blobs with an ominous maroon hue and two glaring red eyes that look like they’ve been robbed off a couple traffic lights. Why couldn’t Avalanche have gone for, I don’t know, a nice baby pink instead? It’s still largely menacing in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

The one saving grace here is that the spider has been put on rollerblades. Why? For the whimsy, perhaps. It’s cute and quirky, sure, but it still doesn’t excuse everything going on above the skates. How does a spider even get a hold of rollerblades, anyway?

Pro: Rollerblades | Con: 🔴🔴

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor: 1.1/10

For those who are curious, here’s a direct comparison of what arachnophobia-safe mode does from r/FallenOrder

Fun fact! Arachnophobia isn’t just the fear of spiders, it also covers other arachnids like ticks, mites, and—in Star Wars: Jedi Survivor’s case—scorpions. Because brains (especially mine) are stupid and fickle things, I’m not actually scared of scorpions, despite essentially being spiders wearing plate mail with poison on tap. Alas, I live in the UK where the number of scorpions who have made their way into my apartment is approximately zero, making them a little less frightening to me.

I guess EA wanted to get in on the arachnophobia toggle fun, though, because here we have one that tries to make Jedi Survivor’s scorpions a little friendlier. Except, it doesn’t really do… anything? It whacks down the number of polygons for the scorpion’s model and puts a big ol’ black tube around its stinger.

It’s still, ultimately, very scorpion-shaped. I could see it from any renderable distance and recognise what it was. I don’t know, maybe I’m biased as someone who thinks scorpions are Just Okay, but I feel if I was scared of ’em, this mode would do absolutely nothing for me. Perhaps even worse is the fact that the game also has exploding ticks—which, as we discovered earlier, can also fall into arachnophobia—yet the toggle does nothing about them. A poor attempt.

Pro: Not a spider. | Con: Still very obviously a scorpion.

Lethal Company: 9.2/10

So far we’ve had orbs, crabs, low-poly scorpions, and rollerblades. All very noble attempts, sure. Very visual attempts. Yet nobody dared to tread into the power of words until Zeekerss came along with one simple arachnophobia mode: Take all the spiders away and replace them with the word “SPIDER” instead.

They still have two teeny-tiny legs mind you, which I don’t love, but almost all of what makes them hair-raising is gone in favour of the written word. It’s 3D text that swivels around and bounces up and down with the regular spider’s movement, adding the perfect blend of horror and comedy to my planetary excursions.

Is it a particularly elegant solution? Not exactly, but it also feels like one that fits in surprisingly well with Lethal Company’s whole vibe. It’s also easily the one that assuages my fears the most out of all the modes we’ve seen so far, and that’s a bonus.

Pro: Great font choice | Con: Tiny spider legs.

Monster Hunter Wilds: 5.6/10

Uhh. I… don’t know where to start with this one. Technically Monster Hunter Wilds isn’t out until February 2025, but a recent beta gave us a peep at what we can expect out of its arachnophobia mode when the full game releases.

First of all, despite being part of an arachnophobia mode, the affected creatures seem to be some kind of mosquito rather than a spider or other arachnid. Their legs do look vaguely spider-y, which is perhaps where the decision has come from. Whatever they are, they’ve been swapped out for giant translucent slimes. I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll let our Staff Writer Harvey Randall’s piece on Capcom’s attempt at an arachnophobia mode do the talking for me instead: “That slime is 100% humping that person. The prosecution rests.”

Yup, the slime transformation gives certain animations an unintentionally saucy flair. The one Harvey is calling out here specifically is one where the mosquito knocks down your hunter before leaping on top of them and, presumably, sucking their blood. You know, as mosquitos do.

Except when said mosquitos are in gelatinous blob form, it doesn’t look like that at all. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole situation. The blobs take away some sort of distress, sure, but I also feel like it adds a whole other kind to contend with. This is somehow weirder than the rollerblades and the 3D text.

Pro: Not scary. | Con: Weirdly sexual.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: 4.3/10

Despite there being a metric ton of Call of Duty games, Black Ops 6 is the first one to actually have some kind of arachnophobia mode. That’s down to the little eight-legged undead arachnids that are scuttling amongst the humanoid brain eaters in the game’s Zombies mode.

Once again, Activision has gone for limb amputation. Why always the legs? I understand they’re probably the part that gives people maximum heebie-jeebies, but it’s only one part of a larger fear machine. I would argue that the scariest part of Black Ops 6’s zombie spiders are in fact their terrifying teeth, but those remain the same.

What we’re left with is a monstrous floating head that, for me anyway, does almost minimal damage reduction to my psyche. If one of these was chilling in the corner of my bedroom, I would be burning the entire place down and moving across the country.

Pro: Not very furry | Con: Boils and teeth???

Satisfactory: 9.9/10

I thought that we may have peaked with Lethal Company’s evolutionary arachnophobia mode implementation, and then while I was writing this whole thing I came across one that transcends them all: Satisfactory.

I have never played Satisfactory, nor will I ever probably play it. It’s the kind of game I’m not at all smart enough for, instead being one I quietly appreciate in the background. I’ve now come to appreciate it even more upon learning its delightful solution to simply replace all spiders with a flat JPEG of a cat’s head, complete with meowing.

It’s an absurdly immersion-breaking fix, I know, but I find that all of the arachnophobia modes that actually help tackle the fear are. If I’m gonna have my spiders taken away from me, I want them replaced with something fuzzy and calming. That’s cats, baby. It’s fun, it’s friendly, and it would absolutely get me to play the game if I knew it wouldn’t break my brain in the process. As a cat lover, I vote every developer does this with their arachnids from here on out

Pro: Cats. | Con: You cannot pet the JPEGs. They still bite.