Netflix’s interactive specials ranked by how much your choices matter
[ Ed. note: This ranked list is being continually updated as Netflix adds more interactive specials.]
2018’sBlack Mirror: Bandersnatch and 2019’s You vs. Wild marked a new phase for Netflix’s interactive shows, which started off with relatively simple interactive experiments for kids in 2017, designed to test the waters for actual Netflix games down the road. These Choose Your Own Adventure-style stories became some of Netflix’s more distinctive offerings for a short while, but they’re getting rarer as Netflix’s focus shifts toward skill tests like Cat Burglar and Trivia Quest.
Still, Netflix continues to drop the occasional interactive story, and we’re continuing to rank each one based on how interactive it actually is. The service’s latest interactive special, the ambitious We Lost Our Human, prompted a new update of our rankings. This list considers whether a given Netflix interactive special is fun to play, what kind of story it’s telling, and whether your choices actually have any effect on how that story unfolds.
[Disclosure: Unwind Your Mindis a collaboration between Headspace and Vox Media Studios, a unit of Polygon’s parent company, Vox Media.]
This shouldn’t even really count as an interactive experience, but Netflix has labeled it as an Interactive, so we’re mentioning it. The only interactive part of this is picking which Headspace program you want: meditation, relaxation, or sleep. You can customize from there, but it’s just a glorified menu. Useful for what it’s meant for, but not so much for a story experience.
Similarly, Netflix files Trivia Quest under the interactive tag, but it isn’t an interactive story like the entries below. It’s based on a popular app calledTrivia Crack, and it’s basically a
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