Threshold
Review
What's scarier than your mundane job?
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
A Good Time At A Bad Job
Threshold is one of those games that begs to be reviewed in reverse, so to speak. It's a fascinating game that is well worth the time of horror enthusiasts who can stomach a bit of jank and friction. You're likely to find varying interpretations and feelings invoked by the end, simply because the game acts as a work of art without insisting that it is. All the while, it doesn't demand much of your time, with a full play-through that's more brief and engaging than a movie.
Before you get to work, you're interrogated on whether you're a very focused or easily distracted player, and then ominously asked to choose your country, both for difficulty. Once you've made your choices, and handed over your signed contract, you ascend from deep underground to start a new job that is as menial as it is repetitive: spending hours of your day at the Border Post, ensuring that this endless train that scrolls past keeps the right pace, which is dictated by some nebulous, "corporate" overlords, and showed to you by a series of lights and a siren when you're off pace. You accomplish this by blowing a loud, full-lunged tune on your whistle directly into a large horn. Horn blows, train speeds up one notch. Simple, right?
The Job Gets Worse The Longer You Stay
While your only responsibility is to this very-hard-to-miss metric, mundanity is not as horrifying as what could be lying behind the simplicity. This surface world, obviously ravaged by something unfortunate, lacks a great deal of oxygen. Every deep breath you take to blow the whistle drains the mostly invisible meter, as does moving too quickly, jumping, and a few other real-life exertions. Thankfully, your gracious bosses thought ahead, and provide you the opportunity to earn tickets through some side work that you can cash in for Air Cans, which is a friendly name for glass tubes filled with air. Simply bite down on the glass tube and quench the thirst of your lungs.
As you learn more about this world, you'll see your role transform. While the play space is relatively small, it is packed with curiosities and mysteries that reward you to look beyond the job. Solving some of these puzzles offers varying levels of satisfaction, but it’s overall gratifying to see the more obscure experiments lead to something other than failure.
Coming Back For More
Obviously, this is a game that requires me to be vague. So much, from the machinations of the world to set-piece moments, hit hard because they're surprising, and spoiling them would be the ultimate disservice. The thing is, though, that even successive play-throughs lose only marginal effectiveness with the foresight of the story. That speaks to the sandbox, the way the game seems to have expected your potential actions, and the overall atmosphere.
Yeah, there are multiple endings, and not all of them appear to be obvious. To put that in perspective, I tried to end the game in a way I thought was an intended path, but it didn't work. However, I stumbled into my first ending by doing something I was equally sure wouldn't work. Regardless of everything else, I immediately felt the pull to go back and see what else I could pull off.
Work is Dread
Threshold's strongest and weakest points are deeply connected. It was a joy to see just how the world's immersive sim elements would react to certain actions, but on more than a few occasions, something broke completely. It is a testament to the experience that this wasn't as frustrating as it could have been, but running into soft-lock states is less-than-ideal. The overall runtime and the solo developer responsible for the game earn a certain level of grace with these things, but they're sticking points, at least.
The half that deserves a particular shout out is the design. Certainly the art style is reminiscent of plenty, but it is copying nothing and using the style to significant effect. Threshold does more than employ a retro art style. It makes a meaningful choice with that style, and proves it multiple times. One moment sticks out to me as one that wouldn't be the same with higher or lower fidelity. It was a scene playing out in front of me as I stood there in awe. It gave me chills for reasons I'll probably never adequately explain, and I was ecstatic that it continued to play out on screen. A few graphical glitches presented themselves here and there, but most of them added to the surreal charm rather than driving up the wall, metaphorically.
Similar to the effecting graphics, the sound design took me by surprise multiple times. Sometimes it makes your solitary moments on the job threatening, and other times, it reinforces the grand and oppressive forces above your head. I will resist the urge to mention, specifically, biting the air cans, though. The best way I can describe it is: remember the first time you heard Inception's now-omnipresent BRAAAM? There's at least one moment like that.
Clocking Out
Threshold is more than just disparate cool ideas, it's the culmination of them. It has enough interactivity to allow the player to inhabit the world and experience a story obtuse enough to allow you to insert your own pieces. The graphics and audio design play an early and constant role in introducing you to the more sinister parts of your new mundane job. It all combines to make something that, despite its flaws, is worth at least one play-through, and probably cult classic status in this niche genre.
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8.5
fun score
Pros
A short and engaging story with stellar audio and visual design in a well-realized world
Cons
A few progress-killing glitches that could use ironing out, and some of the (relatively) longer-running "puzzles" offer little payoff.
