Huh, it’s a little hard to breathe today, don’t you think? Like the air’s a bit thin. Anyway, I have a job I need to get to and there’s this guy who’s going to mentor me on my first day. A guy called Mo, who seems nice but isn’t particularly talkative. Prefers paper and pencil.
Yeah, it’s Threshold. God my lungs are about to burst.
Ed: Threshold is a short psychological horror about working a shift atop a lonely mountaintop borderpost. Told through a first-person perspective, your first port of call is to meet Mo, whose shift you’re swapping into. But first he shows you the ropes, since you’re new to it all.
First off, the air is very thin, which not only makes it hard to breathe, but more efficient to write things down on pen and paper – speaking is for amateurs. Onto the job. Notice the train that blazes past the post? You’re to keep that running at the “expected pace” by blowing into a whistle whenever you see the lights indicate it’s, well, not running as fast as it should be. To keep it running at the expected pace is to keep the water flowing through the border post at a nice level.
Blowing into the whistle forces air out of your lungs, though. So Mo tells you to bite down on an air capsule that shatters in your mouth and causes you to spit blood on the dirt. He shows you around the border post: where the ticket machine is to get more capsules… and that’s about it. He glosses over words scrawled in blood and the inconspicuous outbuilding and why you’re even doing your job in the first place. What’s on the train? Who knows.
And so, you’re to continue where Mo left off. But since Mo leaves, you’re given a bit of autonomy to explore the post between train whistles. It is, essentially, a game about poking and probing. Find a thing, use your mouse wheel to equip it, then take it to whatever object may interact with it. Slowly, steadily, you’ll uncover things about the border post you probably wished you didn’t know…
… and that’s about as much as I can say without spoiling things for you. Just know that the shift and the sounds of the whistle and the urgency of it all will entirely consume you. I haven’t been so engrossed in something in a long time, and so entirely aware that what I was doing was totally absurd. This is a compact horror game you’re obligated to play now! You read this piece, which counts as signing a “must-play” clause with your eyes. Sorry.
Head back to the advent calendar to open another door!