You probably still know Fullbright as the studio behind Gone Home, a delicately experimental first-person story about a girl exploring her childhood home after a trip abroad and learning of the turmoil that has been going on during her absence. Imagine this game in your mind: the silence in the halls versus the thunder of the storm outside, the sickly sweet ’90s decor, fairy lights and twisted balls of paper, the gentle amber pressure of teenage memories hidden in the monastery. Now imagine gently sneaking behind the skirting boards. Buzzing in the pipes. Was there a toilet at the Gone Home Autumn estate? I don’t remember, but you should probably stay away.
Now available on CoupleToilet Spiders is the first part of a modern anthology series of “short, weird lo-fi games” collected under the Fullbright Presents brand. To unceremoniously go off the Steam blurb, it’s “a short, replayable lo-fi first-person survival horror game in which you must learn to assess your odds and manage your resources to avoid or deter giant radioactive spiders lurking in filthy toilets that contain keys and items.” needed to complete the mission and save lives.”
The game takes place in a kind of Exclusion Zone, where you play as a nameless “volunteer” sent by an obviously tyrannical regime, and the map is divided into several floors. “Found items such as old light bulbs, surplus flash grenades, and lucky coins will aid you in your mission, but they are few and far between,” the Steam page continues. “You must learn how to best judge your chances and create your own happiness if you want to live.”
Personally, I think the game made a mistake by not including a pooping mechanic, because as any arachnophobe knows, the real terror of a hypothetical toilet spider is knowing you forgot to check the shell before diving down. Remember, you can always up the intensity by downloading the game on Steam Deck and playing it while riding the porcelain express.
Fullbright’s games, of course, have always had a suggestion of horror. Gone Home plays with your expectations a bit, dangling a red herring of supernatural activity only to replace it with, um, an emerald sardine that’s a metaphor for hidden emotions. Fullbright’s next Tacoma makes this more overt, as it takes place aboard a space station haunted by holograms. Still, I’m impressed with how quickly Fullbright went from “psychological theme” to “literal atomic arachnid biting my face off.” Could giant spiders also be a metaphor for something? I wouldn’t be surprised if the B-movie styling of the game is another red herring.
The less fun context to all of this is that Fullbright is not the same Fullbright who created Gone Home or Tacoma. In 2021, co-founder Steve Gaynor was accused by several former employees of mistreating staff and creating a toxic workplace. Gaynor then stepped back from his role in Open Roads’ “short but bittersweet” fairy tale and parted ways with the development team, which became a separate entity.
As of September 2023, Gaynor was the only remaining Fullbright employee. I think Toilet Spiders is mostly his work. It’s dangerously basic to read Toilet Spiders as some kind of commentary on the above events and Gaynor’s state of mind since then. But don’t let that stop you.
