Your first choice, designed to demonstrate how the interactive element works to viewers, is a fun one. Which cereal do you want: Frosties, or Sugar Puffs? Neither are particularly filling if you ask me, but after choosing Stefan's breakfast, the show starts handing you weightier decisions to make. You can let Tuckersoft's developers help Stefan make Bandersnatch, or have him make it alone, which will shape its overall success. The content of the game isn't terribly important to the story, but if you get an ending where it's released, Stefan will get a review score from a TV show called Microplay, presumably a riff on the BBC's
'80s computer program Micro Live (I wasn't born until 1988, so I'm slightly out of my depth on that one). Getting a good score is
hard.
You can then decide whether Stefan discusses his mother's death with his therapist, which will determine how big a role this memory plays in the events to come. Without getting too granular, you can also choose whether to take drugs at a key moment, or commit violent acts, or even decide which record you want to buy. Hanging over Stefan's project is the Bandersnatch source material, the work of a man who murdered his wife and daubed a branching story symbol on the wall in her blood. This disturbing imagery reappears as Stefan attempts to hit his almost impossible deadline.
