Netflix Releases Thronglets, a Black Mirror Tie-In Game

Night School, the indie game studio acquired by Netflix in September 2021, has released Thronglets via Netflix Games. A tie-in with a recent episode of dark sci-fi series Black Mirror, the game tasks players with caring for rapidly-multiplying little creatures who may have a sinister message for gamers.

Referenced in season 7’s Plaything episode, Thronglets appears there as the work of Tuckersoft, a fictional games company previously used in Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode. The Night School version closely follows the fictional version, however, as it was developed alongside the show with series creator Charlie Brooker.

“A lot of the early conversation was, the thing about ‘Black Mirror’ is you expect this to–we can’t just do a standard game, right? It has to have some element to it that’s possibly unexpected, or it looks like it’s going one way, and then it sort of goes another,” Brooker said in a recent interview with Variety. 

“The juxtaposition of making it look as cute as possible, and having quite disturbing and dark things happen in it. And so I think around there it definitely was when it really started feeding back into the episode itself, as well.”

Tamagotchis Gone Wrong

Thronglets are cute little yellow creatures that the player needs to care for, as well as order to perform tasks like gather resources and build. In both the episode and the actual game, however, the Thronglets often have questions for the player. 

“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,” said Netflix on its official website.

“As your city grows, you’ll access more tools to keep your budding Thronglet society thriving,” the company added. “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.”

Breaking The Fourth Wall

Black Mirror’s standalone Bandersnatch episode lets viewers choose different paths throughout the story, echoing the episode’s narrative of a mysterious choose-your-own text adventure being developed by Tuckersoft, so Thronglets plays with a similar self-referential idea.

It also falls squarely into the cursed games genre arguably started by Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island, which initially takes the form of an endless runner but soon starts to glitch and have in-game characters address the player directly. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Black Mirror often dips into the world of video games, though, especially in a metatextual way, as Charlie Brooker started as a video game journalist. He also created Gameswipe in 2009, a one-off TV show about the games industry, and several seasons of Screenwipe and Newswipe, which examined the TV and news industries, respectively.

Netflix Games Try Something New

Netflix Games, the video game division of Netflix, technically started with the release of Bandersnatch in 2018, but didn’t get fully publicized until November 2021. By that point, it featured a few Stranger Things-themed titles and casual games, but soon expanded to include a mobile port of Night School’s well-received 2016 debut, Oxenfree, and then its sequel in 2023.

However, many gamers had no idea the service even existed until relatively recently, and reports have highlighted that many of its existing tie-in titles, like Squid Game, are lacking in quality. Netflix has also shuttered studios it acquired, some before they even made or released a game, as well as firing an undisclosed number of staff at Night School (in February 2025).

All of this was followed by news earlier this year that Mike Verdu, former head of Netflix Games, had gone onto a role as Netflix’s VP of Generative AI only to then leave the company. Alain Tascan, a former executive with Epic, EA and Ubisoft, has since taken over as the head of the games division. 

Tascan, for his part, has also been surrounded by news of studio shutdowns and lay-offs. Talking at the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco in March 2025, Tascan outlined where he feels Netflix Games can change and grow.

“We are not yet the Netflix of games, but that’s exactly where we are headed,” he said. “It’s about having a deeper connection with the players. Offering something fresh and new with new experiences and creating this only on Netflix. By the end of the year, we’re going to try to manufacture a few (new titles) that hopefully will surprise a lot of you.”