Black Mirror is back for its seventh season, and tech geeks like me are thrilled by the wild plotlines and futuristic themes the show is known for. One episode in particular, Plaything, stood out for putting a fictional 1990s game at the heart of its story.
If you’ve watched this episode and found Thronglets intriguing, you’re in luck. There’s no shortage of virtual life simulation games out there that capture the gameplay and vibe of Thronglets. If the game got under your skin, here’s a whole list of games that scratch the itch.
6
Creatures
The Creatures game series is as close to Thronglets as it gets. In fact, it directly inspired the creation of Thronglets. As mentioned in an article by The Hollywood Reporter, the episode’s writer, Charlie Brooker, reviewed Creatures in the 1990s while working as a journalist at PC Zone (the same magazine where Plaything‘s main character works).
In Creatures, you take care of artificial lifeforms called Norns, which hatch, grow, and learn over time, much like the show’s Thronglets. You take care of the Norns and ensure their survival by guiding them in various tasks, such as eating, mating, and exploring.
Norns are essentially virtual pets that you have to care for. For example, if you never teach them how to find and eat food, they’ll eventually starve to death. They can also get sick, and if you don’t find a cure, their illness will worsen over time. It’s pretty brutal.
The most fascinating feature of this game is that the Norns actually have an AI baked into them, impressive when you consider the game’s 1996 original release date. The AI system is surprisingly sophisticated, as the Norns can talk and learn from you or each other.
Explaining how all this works is a bit too complex to cover here, but fortunately, author Alan Zucconi has created an in-depth video and blog post detailing the AI behind Creatures.
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5
The Sims
When I mentioned writing this article to my non-gamer wife, she immediately blurted out, “The Sims!”—and she was absolutely right. Brooker mentioned in the aforementioned The Hollywood Reporter article that a lot of inspiration for the episode came from the creative torture that players inflict on the poor Sims in The Sims and SimCity.
The 90s graphics and vibe aside, The Sims shares a lot of similarities with Thronglets in the gameplay, though it’s more realistic because the Sims resemble humans.
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It’s also more detailed: in addition to building their houses and taking care of the Sims’ basic needs like food and hygiene, you can develop complex relationships between Sims, build careers, and guide your Sims’ life aspirations. As your Sims age and their families expand, your responsibilities grow as well.
However, for many players, the real fun starts once you unleash chaos on your poor Sim, just like Lump did to the unsuspecting Thronglets. You can set their houses on fire, drown them by removing the pool ladder, starve them, electrocute them with faulty appliances, or trap them by deleting the doors to their rooms. Their reactions are wildly over-the-top. If you have never tried torturing the poor Sims, you definitely should!
The Sims 4
- Released
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September 2, 2014
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Maxis
- Publisher(s)
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Electronic Arts
- Engine
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Proprietary Engine
- Cross-Platform Play
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Xbox, PlayStation, and computer versions of Sims 4 are all separate games incompatible with each other
- Cross Save
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no
- Franchise
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The Sims
4
RimWorld
RimWorld is a base-building colony simulation game where you manage a group of survivors following a shipwreck on an alien planet. The game is packed with content, offering tons of activities and a huge variety of items to build and expand your base as your colony grows.
The colonists are similar to Thronglets, but their needs go far beyond the basics—each colonist has unique needs that change and evolve over time. They can develop substance addictions, fall in love, and spiral into depression if their partner dies, resort to cannibalism if hungry (and even get addicted to it), and much more.
You can also send the colonists on expeditions, but be careful—pirate raids can wipe out your base if you don’t have a defense system.
A standout feature in RimWorld is the AI storyteller, who controls the flow of events in your playthrough. Depending on the experience you’re after, you can choose between three storytellers: Cassandra Classic, Phoebe Chillax, and the unpredictable chaos machine that is Randy Random. It’s all surprisingly deep for an indie game that was almost entirely made by a single developer.
With the colonists’ unique personalities combined with the AI storyteller’s twists, RimWorld has a way of making you get attached to your little digital humans frighteningly fast. Fair warning: the game is super addictive; if you’re not careful, you might turn into Cameron from the episode. If you like the concept of Thronglets but want something more serious and challenging like Factorio, RimWorld is your game!
Black Mirror on Netflix
Black Mirror’s seventh season premiered on Netflix recently. The fourth episode, “Plaything,” is a must-watch for gamers who love old-school games set in a futuristic sci-fi universe.
3
Gourdlets
The last entry was as in-depth as a game like Thronglets can get. If you’d prefer something closer to Tamagotchi, Gourdlets is for you. It’s a relaxing game with no end goal other than to build a town for the adorable little veggies. Sound familiar?
Even the name of this game is reminiscent of Thronglets. Just as “throng” refers to a densely packed gathering, a “gourd” is the fruit of a plant species that includes pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers.
Gourdlets shares the same cozy atmosphere as early-game Thronglets. Fortunately, it maintains that vibe throughout. I also have to commend the stunning retro pixel graphics, which are perfectly complemented by the soft pastel color palette.
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2
Lemmings
When watching the Black Mirror episode, Lemmings was the only game I could think of. Admittedly, the gameplay is nowhere close to that of Thronglets and the other games from this list, but the overall vibe is on point.
You’ve probably heard of and even played Lemmings before, but in case you haven’t, it’s a puzzle-platformer where the main objective is to guide the tiny anthropomorphic creatures to the exit.
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If you don’t guide them using the tools you have at your disposal, they’ll fall down the cliff and die spectacularly, much like their real-world counterpart.
The game was a huge commercial success when it released in the 1990s, and it propelled the developers, DMA Design (today’s Rockstar North), to the highs that enabled them to make amazing games like GTA and Red Dead Redemption.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy the game digitally anymore, so the only way to play Lemmings is through unofficial clones like NeoLemmix and Pingus.
1
Black Mirror: Thronglets
While games like Creatures and Gourdlets share many similarities with Plaything‘s Thronglets, the official TV-show tie-in mobile game Black Mirror: Thronglets is actually that exact game, and it’s available on the Play Store and App Store. All you need to play it is a Netflix subscription and a compatible phone.
Although Cameron plays Thronglets on his PC in the show, the game’s not actually available on Steam. Fortunately, you can still use an Android emulator like BlueStacks to play it on your PC.
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Other than that, the game is pretty much what you’d expect: you start by hatching a single Thronglet and take care of it until it reproduces. As their numbers grow exponentially, you help them develop a civilization and pursue increasingly ambitious goals, which they communicate through their adorable little sounds. Naturally, you can also take your anger out on them, and they’ll learn to fear humans.
Strangely enough, despite the game’s main gimmick in the TV show being that it has no goal, direction, or end, the actual mobile game does have a goal and even an end, which I won’t spoil here.
Whether you’re making a cute town for vegetable people in Gourdlets, guiding intelligent Norns in Creatures, or shaping the fate of your colony in RimWorld, there’s no shortage of ways to shape virtual lives. These games are quite addictive, though, so don’t make the same mistake that Cameron did!
