Fullbright drops a surprise horror game on Steam, and it's all about giant spiders hiding in disgusting toilets

pcgamer.com:

Fullbright, the studio behind Gone Home and Tacoma—in name, at least—has dropped a surprise new horror game on Steam called Toilet Spiders. In case the title leaves any doubt, this is one you'll definitely want to stay away from if you have a thing about spiders.

I say it comes from the studio «in name» because it's essentially a solo project from Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor, who split from the rest of the team in 2023 in the wake of allegations of a "toxic culture" at the studio a couple years earlier. Open Roads, the game the studio was working on when the allegations came to light, was eventually released by the Open Roads Team, while Gaynor carried on with the Fullbright name as a solo developer.

Toilet Spiders is the first game to come from Fullbright after that split, and it's definitely something different. You play as a «volunteer» sent by a vaguely Eastern European government to a decrepit, abandoned government facility; you are equipped with absolutely nothing to help you accomplish your mission, which is fine because you also have no idea what your mission is. Getting out seems like the best idea, but unfortunately many doors are locked and the keys have for some reason been hidden in some of the facility's many, many crappers—which, for the record, are in dire need of a good scrub.

The toilets are disgusting, but this is not the worst problem. The worst problem would be the giant, radioactive, murderous spiders that have also taken up residence in some of them. Most toilets hold nothing, a few have keys you need to progress, and a few house SURPRISE SPIDERS that will leap out at you in various forms, leading to your immediate demise. You have three volunteers for each session, and if they all die before you do whatever it is you're here to do, items and spiders are randomized and off you go to try again.

The mechanics are very simple—everything is controlled with a left-click—and after a while the spider attacks become less startling and more just