How Night School helped Netflix hatch Black Mirror: Thronglets

Crossovers between games and TV or film can be very successful, and few know better than Netflix Games. After launching Squid Game: Unleashed to great success at the end of 2024, they’re back with Black Mirror: Thronglets, a mobile game developed with the Night School team, the studio behind the 2016 supernatural thriller hit Oxenfree.

This title, a game at the center of the Season 7 episode “Plaything” is part virtual pet, part village manager, part strategy game, and part existential conundrum. Set in the same universe as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, players must hatch, grow, and care for hundreds of critters known as Thronglets. As the population builds, players begin delving into the intricacies of the human condition and the repercussions of our infatuation with all things digital.

We sat down with Bryant Cannon, game director at Night School: A Netflix Game Studio, to discuss how the team crafted this mobile game that immerses fans in the world of Black Mirror like never before.

How did this project come to fruition?

Night School joined Netflix in 2021, and we’ve been wanting to work with Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror, for at least a couple of years. We are all huge Black Mirror fans!

While Season 7 was in development, Night School got early access to the scripts to a few episodes that had video game themes to them. Since we make series, films, and games under one roof at Netflix, these are the kinds of early connections we can make, which is so creatively inspiring.

When we met Charlie and his team from Broke & Bones, we pitched the idea of making “the game from the show” from the “Plaything” episode. It was a collaborative creative partnership from start to finish, and is exactly the kind of thing we wanted to make when we joined Netflix, so we’re really happy with how it all turned out.

Once game development began, what was the team looking to accomplish?

We knew we wanted to make a direct continuation or extension of the episode in a unique way. So not just a prequel or sequel, but a deep dive into part of the lore. We wanted to give Netflix members the ability to download an artifact from the show, which is kind of insane to think about after you’ve seen “Plaything.”

From there, we decided to tell this story using an actual pet simulator/city builder style game, with narrative deeply woven in. Normally it’s one or the other, but what we think makes this game resonate so well is that it has beloved sim mechanics with a storyline that drives it along.

How early into season 7 preproduction or production did game conception and development begin?

We began development about a year before the new season of Black Mirror came out. At that point, all we had was a synopsis and a script, and the rough cuts of the episode came through when the game was about four months in development.

How did you work together to ensure a consistent vision across the tv show and game?

It was through close collaboration with Charlie and his amazing team at Broke & Bones that we were able to make this work even without being able to see the full episode.

Since we were developing the game and episode at the same time, the game actually influenced how the Thronglets showed up in the episode – it’s really the first time we’ve done something like this at Night School and probably Netflix, too!

Based on prior games and the themes they cover, Night School Studio is a great fit for developing this game. Can you please discuss how the team brought their own flavor to such a successful IP?

Night School is known for its expertise in branching narrative and conversational dialog, so we had to bring that style to the game, of course. All of our previous games give players a chance to reflect on the choices they make, but we took it a step further this time with a personality test. We had so much fun with the concept of the Thronglets judging you, and that Night School flavor led us to something that happened to be very Black Mirror.

How did the team make use of Unity?

We used a lot of data-driven architecture using ScriptableObjects. All of the game design is configurable instead of hard coded. We also used Unity2DTilemap to build our levels, even though our camera was in 3D space. We loved how it didn’t have to be a completely 2D game. URP and post-processing helped to break the fourth wall and incorporate custom glitch effects, and Timeline was key for sequencing a number of scripted events.

Night School Studio has been working with Unity for years. Were there any differences in the way the team approached this project compared to others?

Black Mirror: Thronglets is very systems-heavy compared to previous Night School projects. We used the physics engine for quickly prototyping and kickstarting ideation. Slapping a Rigidbody component on an object gets us really far.

What was the largest challenge you encountered during development?

If you haven’t played the game yet, you start with one Thronglet, but they begin to multiply rapidly. From a development perspective, having so many Thronglets onscreen at once, while having all of them execute their daily routines on a different track (playing, bathing, eating, etc.) was really challenging.

We used profiling tools to find ways to optimize this, and we’re really happy with how detailed and precise it came out. When you zoom in on your screen of 1,000+ Thronglets, you can see each one living out its own journey – the dirt on their face if they haven’t bathed, their sad faces if they haven’t been able to play, etc.

What was the biggest lesson you learned while building the game?

Designwise, we learned more about the complexities of a systems-driven game and how it could narratively work. Since this game combined both a sim-style gameplay with a story, we went through a lot of iteration on how we move players from one narrative beat to another within what is essentially a sandbox. This was the first game we’ve made where we don’t have a lot of control over player behavior, and we learned a ton from it.

When it comes to fan reaction, what does success look like for the team?

From our perspective, success has been seeing how many people say they’re wanting more. Since Black Mirror is all about surprises (sometimes horrifying ones), getting to see the fans’ reaction as they discover the game, its eerie connection to the series, and how the game ends, has also been really gratifying.

And lastly, seeing the reaction to everyone’s personality tests, posting online, and sharing with friends, is another indicator that we’ve created something special that really resonates with the Black Mirror fandom. It’s really awesome to see people talk about watching the show and being surprised that there’s a game that continues the story.

What is your top tip for game studios looking to turn a television series into a video game?

Our biggest learning from adapting Black Mirror into a game was to focus on the themes, meaning, and heart of the world, and think about how to express that through gameplay.

Too many developers (including us, at first!) spend too much time thinking about the story – how do we just extend that story, retell it, do a prequel/sequel, or a straight adaptation.

For Black Mirror: Thronglets, we had to let go of holding the players’ hands so they could experience this world for themselves. We had to empower them to explore the world and what they can and can’t do, and see how they become influenced by the Thronglets – that’s the way we captured the meaning of the episode in the game. Discovering how you can kill a Thronglet, intentionally or not, and what happens from there is far more powerful than us forcing players to a particular outcome.

To read more about projects made with Unity, visit Unity’s Resources page.