The Trolley Solution: the internet’s most memed moral dilemma becomes a video game

Indie developer's take on the ethical conundrum about choosing who to save from an oncoming train may be gimmicky, but with its charm and bite-size levels, it's ideal for the social media era

In 1967, British philosopher Philippa Foot unwittingly created one of the internet's most regurgitated memes. A runaway train is hurtling towards five people tied to the tracks. You can pull a lever to divert the train to a different track to which only one person is tied. Do you intervene to kill the one and spare the five?

What if one of the tracks twisted into a really cool loop-the-loop? Or the trolley was replaced by a bloodthirsty Thomas the Tank Engine? Or the whole dilemma was clumsily altered to comment on the political controversy of the day? Originally formulated as a reflection on moral decision-making, the trolley problem found a second life in the 2010s as a well of inspiration for variously silly, irreverent and self-referential trolley-based memes. Now, it may be entering its third era as surreal interactive comedy game The Trolley Solution.