Game Review: ‘My Little Spider’ Spins Up Relaxing Fun
My Little Spider is a casual desktop idle game that was co-developed and co-published by 9FingerGames and Fatal Fawn Games. You play as a little spider, with the goal of the game being to capture and web insects to earn coins that will be used to upgrade and maintain your webbing abilities.
It’s a spider’s world
My Little Spider is a passive game, meaning that you can start it up and the game plays mostly in the background while you do other activities. Even though you can leave the game on and watch your spider capture insects, you will still need to keep an eye on everything your spider does. You’ll have to manage your bug box, clean the web periodically from debris, and make sure you’re upgrading your web.
Due to the nature of being a desktop idle game, My Little Spider is only available to play on PC and can be purchased through Steam. When you start the game, you’ll be immediately introduced to the friendly spider, the web, and last you’ll also notice something you’ll interact with more than anything else in the game: the bug box.
The bug box starts out with only five bug slots, but throughout your game you’ll need to frequently empty it out, collect coins, and upgrade the capacity for how many bugs you can collect at once.
Over the course of the 35 hours I played the game, I kept it running in the background, and I spent the majority of that time managing the bug box and making sure I had enough coins for the necessary upgrades to complete my tasks. Once you find a good balance between handling the bug box and leveling up your attributes, the game really opens up.
Gameplay, upgrades, quests, and other details
My favorite thing about playing desktop idle games like My Little Spider is that you can play them with as much or as little attention as you want. These sorts of games can be put on in the background of whatever else you’re doing and essentially play themselves. However, the idle games that I enjoy most are the ones that allow the player to incrementally upgrade abilities and unlock trinkets.
My Little Spider does these things well enough, but I wish there were more web upgrades. Some of the upgrades include improving the web quality to attract rarer bugs, increasing how fast the spider can move, how effective the spider can wrap up prey, and several other traits. I spent tens of thousands of coins upgrading my web’s capabilities, and I never felt like I was wasting my time.
In addition to spending time managing upgrades, you will also be dealing with daily, hourly, and main quests. Every day you’ll be given multiple quests that will require capturing a certain amount of insects or even trying to capture insects above or below a certain size.
Outside of checking off quests in your log, there are also special quests such as collecting ten big bugs or five shiny bugs and having them all in your bug box at the same time resulting in unlocking some of the game’s rarer achievements.
There are enough things to upgrade and unlock in My Little Spider that you could easily spend 50 hours discovering everything that this game has to offer. Throughout your journey, you’ll be able to capture 61 unique bugs between the five map locations you’ll get to unlock and visit.
While there are indeed five locations, there is little to differentiate between each area, as the only difference is the types of bugs you can capture because there are no visual differences when on each part of the map. I am a little disappointed by the lack of visual variety, but for a game that is meant to be run on your desktop in the background, I understand why this feature was not implemented.
If you’re running My Little Spider and do not want to be active at all with the game, there is an option to switch the game to Screensaver Mode. In Screensaver Mode, you’ll be able to have a relaxing experience observing your spider handle all the bugs that fly into her web, but be aware that all the bugs captured in this mode will not go into your bug box, and you will not receive a reward for the ones wrapped up. While my experience with My Little Spider did not involve much time in Screensaver Mode, I understand while someone would use this mode as a fun little background distraction.
If you’re like me and don’t always want the game to be in the center of your screen, you can move the web into the corners of your monitor, and it will automatically adjust and conform to the corner instead.
Some of the cosmetics you can unlock are different spider skins ranging from the cute to the fearsome, with my preference leaning more towards the cute. I’m not suffering from arachnophobia by any means but when I am staring at a spider or spider-like creature, I’d rather look at something cuter than the alternative options.
The other unlockables in My Little Spider are hats and trinkets; both can be used to further decorate your spider and web. When unlocking decorations, you will need to complete quests, and they will randomly assign you a new decoration, and only three trinkets can be placed on the web at a time.
Another thing to note in My Little Spider is that there is currently no music, and the only sounds you’ll experience are the sound effects for webbing creatures and distinctive chimes for the bugs that are placed in your bug box. There are very few flaws with this game, but I feel like the game could use more variety, such as more bugs, more decorations, and maybe some theming on the webbing for each location you can visit.
Final thoughts on My Little Spider
Over my time with My Little Spider, I found the experience memorable, but after spending 35 hours in the game and unlocking the achievements, I didn’t feel a desire to unlock every cosmetic option for the spider and all the various trinkets you can get to decorate your web with.
I do wish there was more to do in My Little Spider aside from unlocking cosmetics; the developers could introduce more map locations and more bugs to keep me more interested in this game. Most of the desktop idle games I’ve played, such as the Mister Morris Games title Rusty’s Retirement, can easily require the player to spend 80+ hours and still not complete every upgrade and ability.
My rating for this game: 3/5
If the difficulty in My Little Spider was tweaked a bit and reduced the spawn rate of some of the rarer bugs to make them feel more special, I would be more fulfilled. It feels like the game constantly rewards you with the high-value insects, and it makes the gameplay less engaging.
I’m not saying this is a bad game because it is beautifully designed, and you can tell the developers put a lot of time and effort into My Little Spider, but it feels like it’s missing something that can truly make it special.
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