In 1984, Tuckersoft changed the world with the game Bandersnatch. Ten years later the studio created another game so dangerous that it was canceled midway through development. Just in time for Black Mirror Season 7, Netflix’s own game developer Night School Studio picked up the pieces, and now’s your chance to play the subversive game that never was: Thronglets.
Thronglets is a simple virtual pet, kind of like a Tamagotchi — for roughly the first 10 minutes. Then things get more complicated as you manage an ever-growing population of the little yellow guys. On the surface, it’s all pretty standard fare: Keep everyone clean, fed, and exercised, and your population will continue to grow. There’s always a carrot at the end of the stick to pull you along, be it an upgraded tool, a new type of building, or a thermonuclear device.
Thronglets is part virtual pet, part village manager, part strategy game, and part existential conundrum. It all starts simply enough: You have to care for a fuzzy yellow little creature. Feed it, play with it, give it a scrub when it’s been rolling in the dirt. Keep it happy and it’ll split in two. Sufficiently care for this new offspring and it’ll split again. And again. And again.
At first, keeping up with the needs of your Thronglets is an exercise in time management. It seems like just as soon as you’ve gotten everyone fed and bathed, you have to start over again. Except your success creates an even bigger burden as the population grows exponentially the better you do your job as caretaker. Look away for a moment and one will starve. Or another will wander out of your field of view, and die from neglect. It doesn’t take long for things to get stressful.
To help your Thronglets, you’ll need to collect resources like wood and gems. Good thing there’s no shortage of trees and rocks littering the playfield for you and your Thronglets to harvest. As you hit milestones for things like population growth and gems collected, you’ll get tools along the way to make things easier. A pickaxe that smashes rocks faster than your starter hammer, a chainsaw that cuts more trees down at once, or upgraded factories to process gems. Planting apple trees around the map means your Thronglets can feed themselves, while dropping a bathtub will free you up from manually scrubbing the dirt off them by the hundreds. A merry-go-round keeps everyone occupied, giving you more time to focus on the big picture tasks.
All the while, there’s a sense of something unexpected happening just below the surface. In Thronglets, you’ve got choices at nearly every turn. Some innocent, others not so much. The game plays out in an isometric perspective and there are plenty of things hidden in plain sight. Like the perfect spot to place a mine for extracting gems. It’s just that there’s a gap between the pieces of land and no way over. Or is there?
In true Tuckersoft fashion, this is where the fourth wall starts to break. The Thronglets start communicating directly with you, the player. Chopping down trees with your axe and building a surplus of wood takes time and effort. There’s a faster way: bones. All it takes to get across the gap a little faster is a sacrifice or five. Are you a benevolent deity? Or do you not mind if the road to progress is paved with blood-soaked yellow fuzz? That’s for you to decide.
As your city grows, you’ll access more tools to keep your budding Thronglet society thriving. A factory to process gems faster so you can purchase the next upgrade. Theaters to give your minions some culture and a speed buff. A factory that processes gems faster than ever, but spews toxic waste to the surrounding area. The Thronglets start asking bigger questions too, and seemingly out of nowhere what started as a simple virtual pet becomes something darker and more sinister.
What else would you expect from the game developer behind Bandersnatch, though?
Oh, absolutely. The “White Bear” glyph shows up all over the place: as a darker-colored patch of ground, in a shiny artifact in Act I of the game, even in the form of a monolith as you progress further. You might also spot some additional Tuckersoft nods here and there. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll catch a glimpse of Tuckersoft creative genius Colin Ritman himself. Then there’s the game’s unlockable development diary videos, where some of the developer’s other projects are hidden in plain sight.
You don’t need to watch “Plaything” or play Bandersnatch before jumping into Thronglets. You might get caught off guard when the fourth wall breaks if you’re going in blind, though, and the unlockable video diaries featuring Tuckersoft’s creative genius Mohan Tucker (Asim Chaudhry) might not land the same way. When stuff starts getting weird, having some background on the show and Tuckersoft’s previous “unfinished” game will give you a bit of a heads-up on what to expect.
Thronglets is your window into the world of Black Mirror Season 7. Now you can see for yourself why the game was canceled.
You can play Thronglets right now on your mobile device with no ads or in-app purchases via the Netflix app and your subscription. Just download it here to your Android or iOS device and sign in to your Netflix account.
