The latest game coming to Netflix Games is Thronglets, a Tamagotchi-like experience that hides a story within a story. The real-yet-fictional game comes from the Black Mirror universe and has players controlling and nurturing a digital pet-style creature called a Thronglet. You have to hatch, evolve, and grow the little critters, but beware: they can do more than take over your phone.
In the Black Mirror universe, Thronglets is a title that was canceled in 1994, never again to see the light of day, until someone discovered a way to play it. Raising enough Thronglets results in a harmonic Throng, and by building multiple Throngs, players unlock video fragments that tell the story of the game’s creator: Colin Ritman. The videos are interviews conducted by Mohan Thakur.
If those names sound familiar, they should. Both are fictional characters from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, played by Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry, respectively. The reference firmly connects Thronglets to the Bandersnatch universe, but it begs the question: how close do we really want to get to making Black Mirror‘s disturbing scenarios a reality?
The Black Mirror episode “Playthings” about Thronglets airs today, April 10, 2025. You can watch it for yourself soon, but it might leave you questioning whether you want to raise your own Thronglets or not.
The more of the game you play, the more of the “Ritman Retrospective” you unlock. Netflix says it’s more than just a game about raising digital pets — it’s also an exploration of “the depths of human nature and the consequences of our digital obsessions.” As you finish Thronglets, you’ll get a personality test that you can share across social media to see how your results stack against others. Netflix says to share results with the hashtag #Thronglets, but even that feels like a test of sorts.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.