I've been thinking about this game for two weeks straight now. The crunch of glass splintering between teeth, again and again and again. The tacky texture of foamy, white fat runoff catching in a river grate. I ask myself how strong the charnel stink of 743,524 bodies can get in a low oxygen environment.

I find that I don't have the words to describe this game. I came into it completely blind and found myself deeply immersed for a few hours. The gameplay loop of collect -> recycle -> redeem is satisfying, almost addicting. Oxygen management gives an air of desperation, but without being hard or frustrating. The setting is just enough creepy and weird to keep you guessing but ultimately, almost too busy to bother. It feels very much so like stepping into City 17 for the first time in HL2: you don't really know where you are or what you're doing, but there's an authoritarian grip over you and you have to obey.

I wish I could save it and come back to it. As a disabled person, sometimes I get flare ups of pain and need to walk away from the computer. I understand the artistic choice of rare checkpoints, but for accessibility reasons, I ask kindly for a reconsideration. In the same vein, the "return to last checkpoint" function was partially broken. The lip damage from the air cans was no longer functional and the sequence with Mo finding the player on the observatory also seemed to not work correctly. But as a developer myself, these are minor polish bugs: the game is a master class is ambient storytelling.

What a game! Threshold is exactly the kind of dystopian weirdness that I was looking for. You're thrown into the shoes of a nameless worker whose job is of upmost importance. You better keep that train running, and you better no look around those dark corners! Definitely recommend.