You’ve just been hired at Trolley Problem, Inc., where you will now be tasked with solving impossible problems with high moral implications. The game is a dark comedy based on real-world philosophy where players are tasked with making severe decisions between two answers. You must weigh your moral compass against the world as the questions get tougher and tougher, and the number of lives affected by your decisions get larger.
Simple in concept, “Trolley Problem, Inc.” creates a discussion of ethical questions from genuine research papers by making the player the ultimate decision maker.
This game is centered around the thought experiment of the same name: the trolley problem originally proposed by Philippa Foot in 1967. This ethical problem asks the participant to envision a scenario in which a trolley is on a course to collide with five people further down the track. However, there is a lever that can be switched to divert the trolley to another track to collide with only a single person. This generates two options: stand by and do nothing and five people will be killed or switch the track and kill one person.
If you’re a fan of philosophy, you’re gonna have a great time with this game. All the problems presented stem from real-world research papers and ramp up in scale as the game progresses. The problems are also loosely correlated with one another, which drives a plot line that mostly serves as a stage to set up the problems. While the questions begin on a smaller scale, things quickly rise in scope, which makes choosing one option over another much more intriguing to figure out. Deciding whether to pull a switch to kill one person instead of five was a much easier task than deciding if I should launch a nuclear weapon on a smaller city to deflect an incoming nuke targeted at a large city. This is what makes “Trolley Problem, Inc.” interesting though. It forces players to face these impossible situations and examine their own set of morals and ethics.
All the choices you make can also be seen in comparison to other players, as well as the developer, Sam Read-Graves. It was amusing to see how my answers stacked up against the majority and gave me deeper insight into how other people responded to tough situations.
At first glance, the gameplay would seem to be no more than a survey, and while that is true in concept, there is a bit more nuance than that. A narrator, voiced by Jan Ravens, will provide some background information to each situation alongside a supporting image and little animation. It isn’t much, but I still found it engaging, and it kept me interested in weighing the moral dilemmas presented to me.
In terms of the narrator, I really appreciated the voice work from Ravens. However, something I didn’t always like was how at odds I felt with the narrator in every decision I made. This is likely by design, but most of the conversations play out through guilt tripping and try to make the player believe they are choosing the wrong path. This is all kept lighthearted, though, so I didn’t find too much fault in it personally. Regardless, I can see how it might get annoying to some people.
It took me around two hours to complete all of the questions, and while not a lengthy experience, I still enjoyed my time. The low price point reflects this, which means there is a low barrier to entry if you’re on the fence. The game might not be for everyone, but if you enjoy simple fun and exploring philosophy, I think this is a great place to look.
