Black Mirror’s First Mobile Game Is Here—And It’s a Twisted Treat

Thronglets, a mobile game based on Black Mirror Season 7, is cuter and has a more innocent-sounding name than it should. It takes nostalgia and twists it into horror and gives you an experience that’s like a Tamagotchi and an existential crisis.

A Pocket-Sized Nightmare

A Mobile-Sized Nightmarish Experience If you haven’t been paying attention, the popular Netflix anthology series is great at making you anxious about technology and our relationships with it. This time, you’re not just watching it happen on a screen. With Season 7 dropping on April 10, fans will now be able to play their paranoia too.

From Screen to Smartphone: The Making of Thronglets

Thronglets is a mobile life simulation game straight from the new episode titled Plaything. It’s like a digital pet crossed with a nervous breakdown. You take care of a growing family of shaggy, yellow creatures, the titular thronglets, who are cute at first and become increasingly unsettling as you play. The game looks nice, but true to the show, it doesn’t last that way for long.

From Screen to Smartphone: The Making of Thronglets

Developed by Night School Studio, the Netflix-owned game company behind Oxenfree, Thronglets is the franchise’s biggest leap into interactive storytelling since Bandersnatch. That 2018 interactive film let viewers choose their way through a techno-horror narrative. This time, the story keeps going after the credits roll.

Night School co-founder Sean Krankel, now also Netflix’s general manager of narrative, described the concept as “What if a Mogwai messed up your life after you watched Gremlins?” That chaos-loving, destructive energy is all over the gameplay. And it’s no coincidence—Krankel and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker teamed up to capture that dark-meets-cute vibe.

“Adorable and Horrible”—In Equal Measure

Brooker’s new episode, Plaything, is inspired by his past life as a video game journalist in the 1990s, when he wrote for the UK’s PC Zone magazine. In the episode, Will Poulter reprises his Bandersnatch role as Colin Ritman—a mysterious game developer who drags the episode’s protagonist into a reality-warping spiral.

Krankel says the game was imagined as a “Tamagotchi gone really wrong.” You feed and care for your thronglets, but as their numbers grow, you lose control. Leave one unfed, and it remembers. Miss a few too many meals, and things get dark—fast. The line between love and obsession blurs.

“Charlie said something early on that we wrote on the wall very quickly,” Krankel noted. “Thronglets are adorable and horrible.”

Playing the Episode (Literally)

The best bit? The show and game don’t just share a title—they talk to each other. Details are still under wraps, but Krankel hinted that “there are things attached to the show that will talk back to the game.” That means you might notice the story bleeding across mediums. It’s not a crossover; it’s a feedback loop.

The episode itself plays with meta-narratives. The game inside the episode becomes a real-life app. Brooker’s script pokes fun at gaming clichés while turning a mirror—black as ever—on how we treat virtual worlds as escapes, only to find ourselves trapped.

Not Just a Game, But a Warning

More Than a Game, a Warning Like most Black Mirror episodes, Thronglets hides its critique in cute pixels and upbeat sounds. But the longer you play, the more it becomes a commentary, albeit a subtle one, about our overstimulated/under-rested lives, how tasks pile up, how these creatures get attached, and there’s no pause button with this game or our lives.

It’s not a mobile game with traditional game indicators, goals, or rewards. It’s a slow decline—a game that watches how you play it, pitifully rates your behavior, and in his/her own way always has a score. And isn’t that the most Black Mirror-y thing of all?

Cute. Creepy. Compelling.

The Takeaway: Cute. Creepy. Addictive. If Bandersnatch was a choose-your-own-adventure book for the streaming age, then Thronglets is Bandersnatch’s little brother—small, noisy, and will ruin your day in the best way possible.

Black Mirror Season 7 is out now on Netflix, and Thronglets is a downloadable app on your device. Play if you must. Just don’t get attached.

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