Hogwarts Legacy praised for brilliant hidden mode

You don’t need to play a horror game to find something that may frighten you.

For example, plenty of people find underwater sequences in gaming claustrophobic.

Perhaps it’s the simple act of walking through a dark cave, torch in hand, unknowing of what lies ahead, even if it is a family-friendly adventure title that you’re playing.

You may find yourself feeling uneasy around a certain type of animal, snakes or a spider perhaps?

I know I fall into that category. I don’t particularly enjoy either creature so I was a tad nervous about coming face-to-face with Hogwarts Legacy’s spiders.

I did end up braving them, just as Ron and Harry famously did in The Chamber of Secrets, but you don’t have to as developers at Avalanche Software came up with a clever mechanic to aid those with arachnophobia.

Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is the latest Wizarding World title to launch.

If you want to enable the arachnophobia mode, you can do so via the game’s accessibility options.

At the bottom of the page, you’ll find the toggle to turn the mode on.

It doesn’t rid the game of spiders but rather transforms them like you might respond to a boggart, turning something scary into something with a humorous appearance.

The replacement spiders don rollerskates to replace their skittering legs, sporting large red bodies that really don’t resemble a realistic spider.

The mode has received endless praise from players since launch.

“I have arachnophobia to the point I scream when I see a spider,” wrote Reddit user Local_Peak8291.

“To see that the spiders in Hogwarts legacy have Quad Skates as feet was pretty funny and distracted me pretty well from the point that I was fighting spiders. Well done.”

“I was so happy when I found out it existed. I also have arachnophobia where I just get really tense and have shivers all over whenever I see spiders (Aragog's scene is really hard for me to watch in CoS but I power through),” added Anyonomus256.

“Arachnophobia mode is my favorite addition to the game!!! I got the Switch version and when I first [saw] the altered spiders, I couldn’t stop laughing!! It’s a replica of Ron in Prisoner of Azkaban’s boggart scene with Professor Lupin. Love it,” said omegatomon_88.

It would be great to see more games come up with in-universe friendly ways to deal with frightening aspects of what are, on the whole, non-horror titles.