The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 19th

Ha, it’s a little hard to breathe today, don’t you think? It’s like the air is a little thin. Anyway, I have a job I need to get to and a guy who will be my mentor on my first day. A guy named Moe who seems nice but isn’t particularly talkative. Prefers paper and pencil.

Yes it is Threshold. God, my lungs are about to burst.

Ed: “Threshold” is a short psychological horror film about working shifts at a lonely border outpost on the top of a mountain. Speaking in first person, your first port of call is to meet Moe, whose shift you’re transferring to. But first he will show you the basics since you are new to all this.

Firstly, the air is very thin, which makes it not only difficult to breathe, but also more convenient to write down information on paper and pen – speaking is an activity for amateurs. To work. Have you noticed a train rushing past the post? You should keep it at the “expected pace” by blowing the whistle whenever you see the lights indicating that it is, well, No I run as fast as I should. To keep it running at the expected pace, it is necessary to keep the flow of water through the border post at a good level.

However, blowing into the whistle forces air out of the lungs. So Moe advises you to bite into an air capsule, which breaks in your mouth and causes you to spit blood onto the dirt. He shows you the border post: where there is a ticket machine to get more capsules… and that’s it. It glosses over the words scrawled in blood, the inconspicuous outbuilding, and why you do your job in the first place. What’s on the train? Who knows.

So you should pick up where Moe left off. But with Moe gone, you’re given some autonomy to explore the post between train whistles. At its core, it’s a poke-and-explore game. Find an item, use the mouse wheel to equip it, and then take it to any object that can interact with it. Slowly, gradually, you will learn things about the border post that you probably wish you didn’t know…

…and that’s all I can say without spoiling it for you. Just know that the shift, the sound of the whistle, and the urgency of it all will completely consume you. I haven’t been so absorbed in something in a long time and so fully aware that what I was doing was completely absurd. This is a compact horror game that you must play right now! You are reading this article, which is considered to be signing the “compulsory game” clause with your eyes. Sorry.

Head back to advent calendar open another door!