I don’t understand why tech companies keep trying to make video games.

Like, Occam’s razor says it’s because the kind of people who work at tech companies also play video games, and tech execs are arrogant enough to think that they can do anything they set their dollars to… but they’re so dang bad at it. 

Microsoft did a pretty good job for a while, but holy cow are they not doing a good job now, and the pain that we’re seeing in the newly recapitalized “XBOX” seems to be just beginning (Gita Jackson at Aftermath said new CEO Asha Sharma is basically Microsoft’s Tom Wambsgans, which I think is a great analogy), because it’s clear that the company does not really care about gaming.

And that’s the problem, right? Meta bought the primary VR gaming platform and has done very little of substance with it: their Second Life clone was a colossal failure, and they just spun off fitness game Supernatural after their post-acquisition decisions mostly just made the current customers mad. 

Google tried cloud streaming with Stadia and even funded some indie studios to make Stadia games, but in typical Google fashion they shut it all down when it didn’t reach whatever arbitrary metrics it required. 

I didn’t even realize how many games have been published by Amazon Game Studios because precisely zero of them have had any real cultural impact; their in-house development has similarly resulted in nothing of consequence. And I dunno: they’re now the stewards of the Tomb Raider and James Bond licenses, but their track record certainly hasn’t inspired confidence (as mentioned in last week’s.TWIRecap, I quite liked 007 First Light and am not stoked that they’ve taken the reigns). 

And then you’ve got Netflix. Unlike these other companies, I can understand why Netflix would want to integrate gaming into their platform. Once, they saw their primary competition as sleep; now, it’s social media. Next, it’ll be, like, chatbots or something: but all they really want/need is your attention, and they’ll follow whatever trends can get it for them. It’s why there are fucking podcasts now – an utterly bizarre addition that will do absolutely nothing for their numbers because who the fuck wants to watch (or listen to) podcasts on Netflix? 

So too with games! In 2023, fewer than 1% of subscribers interacted with that part of the app, and I’d be shocked if it was meaningfully higher three years later. I get the idea of something like a Bandersnatch: a choose-your-own adventure story (that I did not like)… but I cannot fathom picking up an actual controller to play a Netflix game.

But I can imagine picking up my phone… and in that sense, Unhinged is actually a genuinely novel and impactful form of a Netflix game.

It’s the latest project by Night School Studios, founded in 2014, acquired by Netflix in 2021, and hit with layoffs in 2025  (a few months after the closure of Netflix’s “Team Blue,” which was meant to a kind of all-star studio led by folks who worked on Call of Duty, Halo, and God of War… but never actually released any games).

It is also their first release on Netflix itself.  Night School first reached prominence with Oxenfree but also making tie-in games like Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n and The Mummy: Dark Universe Stories… which actually makes the acquisition make a fair bit of sense for a company looking to tie-in with their properties. After their acquisition, they released the already-in-production Oxenfree sequel and then the mobile title Black Mirror: Thronglets, a real game from the fictional universe of Season 7’s “Plaything” (which I didn’t watch, because I gave up on Black Mirror after Season 5). 

Unhinged is not, as of right now, a tie-in to anything, though the 30ish-minute experience sets up a sequel of some kind, and that sequel could be another game, or it could be a movie… or a podcast. I dunno: as long as it streams on Netflix, I guess.

It looks like it could be a new Resident Evil – a first-person story about a woman (voiced by Zoe Kravitz) whose hands go through a whole lot of pain because the hands are the only thing that we as the audience can see. But it certainly doesn’t play like a Resident Evil. Instead, you navigate and interact with this apartment building during a stormy blackout via your smartphone… but not in the way you’d expect. When you open the game, you scan a QR code which opens a unique screen that is its own kind of phone: one that will receive actual in-universe texts and calls that play through the speaker alongside what’s happening on the screen. And it uses the accelerometer in your phone to control your flashlight and point at markers onscreen which you can then trigger via a big virtual button. Every so often, you’re given an indication that something real bad is going to happen and you have to interact quickly lest you die a very gruesome death.

Honestly, it’s a lot like playing a Wii game from (omfg) nearly 20 years ago, with all the jank associated with needing to re-center your reticle as it loses track of where you’re pointing (it also just completely crashed about 10 minutes in)… while simultaneously pushing the “Second Screen” concept of the Wii U to its more rational conclusion of just being the smartphone that we all have anyway. 

And I liked that! It was reminiscent of these old systems while still feeling unique. 

There are two ways to experience the game, though you don’t know about the second until the first time you’ve died: a Normal Mode during which you must act to survive and then a Story Mode where presumably your character makes the right moves to get herself out of the dangerous situations. I went with Normal Mode, but I don’t actually know if that’s the right call, because the problem with dying in a game like this is that when you’re sent back to the moment immediately before, the horror of that moment is gone. The first time a spooky man in a gas mask covered in blood runs at you, it’s genuinely scary. The third time around because you didn’t turn the right direction to see the indicator over the marble statue? Not so much.

But it is genuinely spooky. One particular jump scare had both of us on the couch actually-out-loud yelp, and at just 30 minutes, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, nor does it really give you time to think about what’s going on… which is really for the best, because as soon as you do start thinking about it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The story is built on vibes rather than logic, so don’t try too hard to make it make sense. And also don’t try too hard to outsmart it, either: I thought that there was a puzzle about halfway through, where I would need to call someone on my real phone to ring a fake phone in the game and distract the killer… but when I tried to “solve” this puzzle it only resulted in me being caught before that exact solution being triggered automatically. 

And that was kind of a shame, but it also indicates how a game like this could be expanded in the future. In that sense, perhaps it’s Netflix’s PT: a “Playable Teaser” that proof-of-concepts the first-person horror point-and-click to be expanded in a future title, but that comparison is also a warning: the game PT promised to be a teaser for never materialized, because the publisher decided that the clamboring of fans wasn’t enough to justify its development. I don’t have faith that Netflix will do the “right” thing here and make that fuller game, with more interactivity and real puzzle solving that could make for a truly gripping gaming experience… but for the first time ever, I’ve got a reason to hope. 

Seven Point Nine / Ten