In my short review on Steam after I had finished a first go at the game, I think I’ve nailed the single line hook intended to encourage others to play it.
Threshold is brimming with atmosphere, despite the lack of air.
There’s a lot to be said for negative experiences in video games. By that, I don’t mean dealing with the insecurities of others in a large, multiplayer game like [literally any one with competitive modes]. Neither do I mean playing a game like [see AAA title with performance issues immediately after launch].
No, here I mean a game whose central premise is designed not to be fun. The creators of such a game have chosen to inflict suffering upon the player.
Series such as Dark Souls bring this with an ideal of rising above the challenge. You are going to feel pain and death, but come out the other side all the greater and gratified to have done so.
A title like Pathologic, one I have no intention of playing despite the appeal of the writing because I am not a masochist, wants despair to get further and further into you. Saving people, or even just saving yourself, is meant to be hard.
Threshold’s gameplay in particular leans on this pillar. You are here to do a job, with menial tasks designed to test your competence. None of them are difficult things to do, but how you manage resources and your inexperienced body against the atmosphere is a key part of its design.
Getting on top of these tasks isn’t too tricky, but following the clues while keeping your breath and everything else running is tense.
Sound reinforces this, with cues embeded into the gameplay for you to quickly figure out. They are the tones of a job well done and a job to be done.
Alongside this, Threshold is not pretty to look at. Add a few mushrooms and we’re not far from the aesthetics of an Elder Scrolls game in the early 2000’s.
But I love it for that.
Maybe there’s an element of pretentiousness about my view, but I think it works very well for this game.
I think it builds on the negative aspects of the gameplay and reinforces that this isn’t a place you want to be. The strongest feeling I get is that nothing should be here. It’s desolate and dry and whatever is naturally here isn’t meant to be interacted with. Unease permiates you through the graphics; your eyes bloodshot and breath difficult to keep steady.
Pain is the only currency worth anything here.
From a design perspective, this also allows for things to look normal at first glance, like the train, but only upon a keener inspection are they not quite what they seem. The pine trees near the wall are a great example. I spent my first playthrough quietly ignoring them, focused on being a “good dog” and getting all my jobs done, only to realise later that they are just painted planks.
Some might say that details like that are just a limit of the graphics chosen, but I argue that they are a clever use of the limitations in an artistic manner.
The premise is reasonably simple: you’ve taken a job, signed the contract and are ready for your first shift. You don’t, however, know what the job is.
That ride up the elvator shaft on the first playthrough is fantastic at building the tension; letting it rise with you towards the top, while the words “TRAIN MUST RUN” are interspersed to drive home their message. Music thrums like your heartbeat with each word, dread looming between each flicker of light. The pressure gauge, seen above, steadily drops along the journey and the feeling that you’ve just taken your last easy breath begins to sink in.
Before the game starts, you are asked to choose a name from only two letters, meaning you’re giving a little something of yourself up just to get this far.
Mo, your supervisor, is ready to show you the ropes.
Given how thin the air is up here, it’s advised that employees use a notepad and pencil to communicate. Every breath needs to have purpose and talking is wasting it. He remarks that it’s odd you don’t have a way to talk back, but you’ll both make do.
The train, at first glance, looks industrial. There are no windows or passengers; this is a shipment with importance, hence the need for The Border Post to be manned.
At a second look, it’s unnerving. Where breaks in the line of carriages should be, allowing for traffic to follow through the mountain, there is simply more train. It is a wrong thing, but as Mo explains to you beside a great speaker, you just need to keep it running.
Too slow, blow your new whistle into the speaker and get the pace up. Too fast, simply let it slow. The Expected Pace is the most important thing, conveyed by a line of lights above the track.
After you blow the whistle for the first time, your lungs, not used to the lack of air, are screaming for a breath. Mo presents you with a cannister; leather handles sandwich a glass tube, with indentations primed for your teeth. Bite down, breath and spit the blood from your maw.
You’ll get used to it, says Mo.
Along the track, in a little cove carved from the stone, sits a machine slowly plinking away. Here you can get tickets, which can be used in Building 2 in exchange for more cannisters of much-needed oxygen.
That’s your induction, you can handle the job for now.
One thing that really stands out to me in Threshold is the level design. This should be no suprise given Julien Eveillé’s dayjob, but he has really put something very special together.
The Border Post is a concise area; what it does with the limitted setting is effective and spreads just the right volume of breadcrumbs for you to peak further into this world.
As you exit the elevator in the opening, the train flows past and, below, lies a stream going in the other direction. Further down the track, behind the flag of whichever sovereign nation you’ve chosen to set your game in (which you are given an explicit choice outside of the language), a tower looms over the entire area.
The compact nature of Threshold means that there doesn’t need to be too much to explore, too many locks to get through, but just enough to make you ask what’s in there. A little verticality to the level means that, between whistles and breaths, you are looking around for ways to get up and under the environment.
Exploration is not expansive, but that leans into Threshold’s strength.
One of the first things that will stand out while exploring The Border Post is a grave, tucked away in a corner by the wall.
It begins one of many questions that you’ll no doubt have while on your shift. Finding out what’s going on here and elsewhere on The Border Post is the meat of the game.
This relates to the one aspect that I feel that Threshold could do with a little more explanation.
Several questions will be noted down as you play, specific things that you can try to get answers to if you desire. When you stand and stare at something for long enough, at least in the focused style of gameplay, then you are given something to ponder. I think this could have been given a slightly firmer description, especially for certain areas and prompts. I appreciate the lack of direct tutorial as it keeps the immersion, but just a small nudge would have been nice.
Beyond that, there are a few leads to follow and you will be given the chance to get direct answers if you take that path.
Spoilers from here on. I am advising you to go and play the game before reading further.
Things start to add up in ways that shouldn’t work. You can find a picture noting a local mountain where this post is placed, only to find dead fish in the stream.
When you ask Mo about the grave, when you’ll be given a few opportunities to silently point out things for him to explain, he says it was your predecessor, dead on the job (bonus points if you figured that out from the main menu).
My favourite little detail to find is in the centre of the great wall where the water flows from. If you take a moment to peer into the abyss behind the grate, the camera shifts and, to me, implies that something was staring back and knows you’re there.
Mo explains that while Building 2 is for your needs, Building 1 is for communication with the capital. Cables flow in and out of the windows, crackling with energy.
As you begin to acclimatise to the sounds of your shift, one will throw you off. Building 1 is pulsing with white light and the door, previously closed without a handle, is wide open.
Make your way through and you’ll be surrounded by light at the end of the tunnel.
Here, through the abstract apparitions that make up your employers, the government is able to reassure you of the importance of your job. Keep things clean, tidy up the mess made by Ni, who fills the grave outside, and keep that train at the Expected Pace.
Ni is clearly the key to finding out what’s actually happening here, what the job actually is. So, if you don’t want the shift to last forever, you go looking.
The first note is in Building 2, written in blood with a broken oxygen cannister beside it that says “There is another one”. The second note, which I will freely admit took me longer than it should have to find it, tells us that he’s going to hide it.
Our puzzle ends when we build a bridge up to the observatory to peak into the train.
As we turn around from the revelation, “My Mouth” in dark red stains the stone.
From here, we can retrieve the other whistle, heavy and dark, from Ni’s corpse and there’s now agency in what we do. By this stage, the train will be running faster and faster, but the border post can’t cope. Our signal, the lights reminding us of the work, dislodge from the rock and hang as the pulse of power radiating from Building 1 draws us in.
Mo has caught us where we should not have been, and a punishment must be made. Afterwards, you are given the choice between resignation and staying loyal, an explanation and willful ignorance.
Stay, and you get to decide how this tale ends.
Send the train back, break the bond. Die beneath the fallout. Escape it entirely.
Nothing but blood is left now.
Threshold is game that wants you to question what is happening around you. You are nothing more than a cog in your government’s machine, keeping the blood flowing in one direction.
It goes to great lengths to show you what those in charge view as a sufficient payment; top-quality dental care for the damage they intrinsically cause.
Will you comply like Mo, get the job done and keep going, or is your threshold for suffering a little lower than they want it to be?