bingewatches

A sequel to a beloved anthology TV episode might seem like a cash grab; two in one season could reek of desperation. Yet Charlie Brooker bests the skepticism in Black Mirror season 7 with a double whammy of “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” a follow-up to season 4’s Star Trek spoof, and “Plaything,” a sci-fi tragedy that returns to the timeline of the interactive special Bandersnatch — complete with a new gamified twist.

There was likely no matching the thrill of Bandersnatch’s violent, choose-your-own-adventure progression, and thankfully, Brooker doesn’t try. But the reintroduction of grandiose video game programmer Colin Ritman (played by Will Poulter) offers the TV’s leading doomsdayer another chance to once again examine science fiction dystopias through the lens of gaming. Unlike Bandersnatch, “Plaything” is not literally playable, but it arrives in tandem with a full-blown mobile game, Thronglets, derived from the nightmare at the center of the episode. Both might feel slight on their own. Together, they create a symbiotic experience, well beyond a tie-in game, that seems like a sweet spot for the emerging Netflix Games.

Written by Brooker and directed by David Slade (Bandersnatch, 30 Days of Night), “Plaything” focuses on young ’90s games journalist Cameron Walker (Lewis Gribben), who’s invited to preview Ritman’s latest creation. But as Ritman reveals behind closed doors, what he has programmed, a title called Thronglets, can’t be qualified as a “game.” There is no goal. There is no victory. As Ritman explains, Thronglets, as it exists as data on a CD-ROM, is life, not code. Walker instantly feels the difference as he tends to the throng of li’l furry yellow guys — this is not a Lemmings or SimAnt. The only thing he is playing when hunched over Thronglets is god.

Brooker frames the evolution of Walker from mild-mannered gamer to throng overlord through flashback. In 2034, an older Walker (Peter Capaldi) is under arrest for an unsolved murder and offers his entire life’s story to police as an explanation for what happened. Slade orchestrates the back and forth with a heavy metal grind that feels in sync with Bandersnatch. Walker’s escalating obsession with growing his throng — which requires him to strip generations of gaming consoles for parts in order to build a supercomputer — plays out with rhythmic paranoia that everything will go wrong. Viewers can’t choose which direction the story goes this time, and Slade keeps us trapped in Walker’s head. 

The clever technological twist with “Plaything” is that Brooker and Night School, an indie studio acquired by Netflix in 2021, actually came together to produce a version of Thronglets. The experience of managing the ever-growing throng is every bit as mind-boggling as Walker’s. Like in the episode, players begin with one li’l furry yellow guy, who requires food, water for bathing, and toys to play. Fulfillment allows the single thronglet to bud off and spawn more thronglets, who zip across the pixelated map to find what they need and question their reality. Tap fast enough — to grow apple trees, place bathtubs, construct playgrounds — and the throng will be content, until they aren’t.

In “Plaything,” Walker ascends to the next level of Thronglets when he unlocks a way to communicate with his primitive throng. They want food and shelter, yes, but they also want meaning. Night School’s playable Thronglets doesn’t require you to hardwire anything into your brain to decode a sentient program’s language of choice, but the throngs do make clear early on that they, too, look to you as a supreme being. 

Unlike in most life sims, there’s a strong narrative undercurrent to Thronglets that plays out in dialogue trees in which the player is given the choice to be a cruel or kind master. You can try to explain the point of love or family, or you can be glib and potentially lose the faith of the throng. When it’s time to venture out into the world to discover ore-rich mining areas, you can either build bridges from out of the nearby woods or harvest the bones of fallen throngs, which is sick, but also faster. 

In one of its most clever moments, “Plaything” nods to the history of tormenting Sims by trapping them in doorless houses or ladderless pools in a moment of violence that sends the ultra-protective Walker off the deep end. Thronglets, the playable game, is similarly successful in giving the genre its own self-reflective twists as it forces you to keep up with the pace of throng activity — which is so hyperactive that it might be a chore to play while second-screening Black Mirror — that can only result in consequence. Like Walker, I found myself unexpectedly committed to protecting those li’l furry yellow guys as they grew and grew and grew in number, and suffered in the factories that were eventually built to process ore. I couldn’t help but mourn that our once serene home became an industrial wasteland capable of processing nukes, but I also wanted to see where it all went.

Night School didn’t make Thronglets a full Tamagotchi-level commitment in its attempt to fuse Charlie Brooker’s storytelling with a game; you can put down your phone without sacrificing the lives of the thronglets. But I do recommend turning on notifications for the full existential spiral; after a day or two of ignoring Thronglets, I started receiving pop-ups from my throng begging me to save their lives. Dark. And by the end of the game, it gets darker in true Black Mirror fashion.

Sean Krankel, founder of Night School and Netflix’s current head of Narrative Games, has teased that people who watch “Plaything” and play Thronglets might see some connectivity occur between the two (a Netflix account is required to play the free-to-download game). Even those who don’t get that far, but who engage with both the episode and the game, should feel the next-level experience of their connection. Since they were made in concert with one another, “Plaything” and Thronglets feel like two halves of the same story. “Plaything” establishes a world and Thronglets dunks your head in it.

Like Bandersnatch, the combination feels like uncharted — and overdue — territory for a fully plugged-in streaming service with more to offer than clones of basic cable programming. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, Netflix said it would continue to host major titles on the service, like the Grand Theft Auto series, and invest in couch party games similar to Jackbox. But a third category, in which games and linear TV are tethered through interactive story, has so much potential. As he did with Bandersnatch, Brooker seems ready to experiment. Whether Netflix will grant its other creators the same galaxy-brain freedom may depend on how many people play the Love Is Blind video game. As Colin Ritman says in “Plaything,” at the end of the day, gaming for most people is all about money.

Black Mirror season 7 is now streaming on Netflix. Thronglets is also available to play now.