The Trolley Solution

I went in expecting a one-note meme game and came out genuinely charmed. byDanDans built something that understands its own joke better than most solo developers understand their entire genre: take Philippa Foot's famous thought experiment, blow it up into twenty distinct point-and-click minigames, and let the absurdity do the heavy lifting. That design restraint is rarer than it sounds. The structure is lean and intentional. Each stage presents a new trolley dilemma, a brief moral framing, and then a minigame that interprets your choice interactively rather than just asking you to click a button. The scenarios escalate in delightful ways - the classic one-versus-five opener gives way to dilemmas involving dogs, VIPs, Tamagotchi-style pet mechanics, a Where's Waldo-style hide-and-seek segment, and at least one level that reaches outside the game window entirely and asks you to post something on social media to save lives. That last one got a genuine laugh out of me. Some minigames test mouse dexterity, others are quickfire puzzles or arcade-style dodging sequences, and a few are just plain surreal. The variety is the point. The game never wants you to get comfortable with its rhythm, and that WarioWare-adjacent pacing keeps the whole thing humming. The visual style is clean, lineart-heavy, and cartoony in a way that suits the tone perfectly - monochromatic with optional dark mode for anyone who finds the default white blinding (and some reviewers do). The presentation is minimalist by design, which keeps each minigame's mechanics readable at a glance. byDanDans reportedly built each level around three principles: it had to be fun, thematically linked to the dilemma it represented, and introduce something the player had not seen before in the game. That third rule is the one that earns respect. There are some minor bugs noted by the community - a camera offset in at least one level, some achievement triggers that misbehave - but nothing that derails the experience given how responsive the developer has been in patches. The honest limitation is runtime and replayability. A single playthrough wraps up around 45 minutes, and the puzzles lose their surprise value on repeat runs. If you are looking for mechanical depth or something to return to over many sessions, this will feel thin. The game also does not pretend to give you genuine philosophical insight - its own Steam page essentially admits as much with a dry disclaimer. But that is precisely the honesty that makes it work. It commits to being a well-crafted short joke rather than a shallow long one, and there is craft in knowing where to stop the train. At the end, the game shows you your choices alongside global player statistics, which adds a quiet, unexpectedly thoughtful coda to the silliness. It is a small touch, but it lingers in a way the minigames alone would not. For fans of short-form indie oddities, absurdist comedy games, or anyone who has spent five minutes in a philosophy thread arguing about utilitarian ethics, this is the kind of handcrafted small thing worth an evening.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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