Review | Threshold - Tightly Measured And Breathlessly Sharp
In the world of bureaucracy, a border crossing is the most enigmatic and terrifying of any process for the powerless and common. National borders are invisible, technically. They are created and maintained by human beings, always with violence, perhaps always with a certainty that they must exist. The violence of a national border extends not only to those on the outside but also to those within, charged to maintain it. A national border is a place of asked questions, of hidden systems of power, of uncertain arbitration for the people and things which transgress it.
THRESHOLD is from French solo developer, Julien Eveillé, and it examines a particular border. You play as a clerk. A new recruit or a new hire who is brought to a remote and very high altitude mountain Border Post to work. The outcomes of that first day on the job are varied. The game takes about one to two hours to play through. It offers mysterious numeric scores at the end which invite a second and third examination. We play as a new clerk, charged to maintain this border alone. The developer employs a fascinating subversion: our role is to maintain an endlessly running train as it enters our nation. We are not here to keep anything out. In fact, we are penalised when the train loses speed. It must always trudge along the tracks bringing many many tonnes of its mysterious cargo. We blow a whistle and we wheeze.
Not even a fresh whistle.
Let's start at the beginning. When you begin a new game you are asked to choose a two-letter name. I chose Yk. Then, you are prompted to select a country. A screen appears with text explaining the country you choose will affect the difficulty of the game. According to Eveillé's website, "The game runs on real-world statistics. The country you’ll pick at [the] start will determine the fate of the Border Post."
The high mountain on the border does not change. Perhaps the game is telling us that such harsh and ugly places exist wherever a border exists. For my first playthrough, I chose the United States, and for my second, the United Kingdom. When you begin the game it displays the name of the country you've selected and the year 2021. Such a specific dare, yet too recent for proper nostalgia... another little mystery.
The national flag appears within the game, the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack, respectively for my playthroughs. It seemed to me that perhaps, the U.K. character I made would ask themself more questions. Otherwise, I saw little difference between playthroughs. Perhaps these two countries are not statistically distinct enough?
The game is not without a sense of humour... or irony.
I hesitate to describe too much of the content of the game. It unfolds and offers itself and its mysteries to the player with a palpable intention. I will say the experience is not one of typical horror, although it contains horrors. Nor that it is one of a typical adventure game, although it contains adventure game interaction. (A hint: use your items on other items.)
What I do not hesitate to say is this game is good and you should play it. On release, it is unlikely to be very expensive, and unless you are an extra-national Antarctic dweller then its themes of control, passage, intimidation, and instrumentalisation will be relevant to you.
To play, you must keep an endless train chugging through the checkpoint by blowing a whistle into a large horn, the sound of the horn spurs the train to go faster. As time passes the train will lose speed, when it falls short of pace an alarm sounds, and that's when you blow the whistle. This all takes place in a small, isolated ravine high on a mountain. Because of the high altitude, you will "lose breath" by doing this. You also lose it by running, jumping, and while time is passing.
To recover your breath you bite down on glass tubes full of oxygen. The glass shatters when you do this. An ever-present graphical indicator in the HUD illustrates your increasingly bloodying lips and gums. To acquire more oxygen tubes requires feeding punch cards into a machine in a different building which dispenses them. Punch cards are obtained from either a card puncher which counts train cars and dispenses cards at a rate commensurate with the train's speed or from a recycling machine. The recycling machine will dispense a punch card whenever a full bucket of biological matter is dumped into it. The biological matter can be collected from a grating through which a small river runs (notably, the river runs from the direction in which the train is travelling) although it can also be collected from an outhouse and another source.
These points of interest, the train car counter, the recycler, the horn, the river grating, and the oxygen tube machine, are all set just far enough apart from one another to keep the player more or less in constant motion. Thus costing the player constant breath. This is the little loop you'll find yourself in. It is stimulating and really feels like working a job. And like many jobs, you may eventually notice things are off here and there. These other things, things which are absolutely abstract, unexplained, and surprising are so worth experiencing first-hand that—
How about a video game review? The player's loop in THRESHOLD is stimulating enough to remain engaging while flexible enough to allow the truly intriguing parts to entice the player's attention. The level design is thoughtful, it feels realistic and yet considered. It was not surprising then to learn that the developer designed levels for Deathloop. The themes and tones of the game are deliberate and interesting. The message or messages of the game conspire to relevancy; as art they reflect reality with genuine emotional truth. Certain ideas and topics are made very clear so that murkier and larger concepts can come to the surface.
Still better than most offices.
For the purposes of this review, I played a Beta version of this title on Steam. There were occasional typos and some inconsistent grammar. Several times the story seemed to halt, perhaps a flagging issue, and I had to restart my playthrough. If none of these issues were addressed, I would still consider this a great game. If it were fixed, I would consider it a perfect game for what it is. All the elements of the story, world, and mechanics have been tightly configured to highlight and work together with one another—all the fat has been trimmed, the focus carefully honed. THRESHOLD is a breath of fresh air... and a mouthful of broken glass.
