IMMORTALITY
Genres: Puzzle, Horror, Mystery, Point & Click, Story Rich, Adventure
Release Date: 30-8-2022
Developer: Sam Barlow
Our verdict
7.5/10
- Difficulty: Medium
- Players: 1
- Playtime: 10–20 h
IMMORTALITY is an FMV mystery from Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story. You browse footage from three unreleased films starring an actress who disappeared, and use match cuts to jump between clips: click a face, object or detail and the game cuts to another scene featuring it. It suits solo players who like cinema, non-linear storytelling and working out a mystery yourself.
Steam reviews are mostly positive (about 84% of 1,789). Players praise the acting and call it one of the few games that truly earns the label interactive movie. Many compare the mood to David Lynch and say it stayed on their mind for days. Reviewers stress going in knowing nothing.
The tedious side is real: you spend a lot of time scrubbing and rewinding clips to find hidden details, and there is little puzzle structure to guide you. One critic notes that if you liked Her Story for its search puzzle rather than its film side, this may disappoint. Expect 10 to 20 hours. For film lovers it is a must; puzzle purists should try Her Story first.
Pros
- Match cuts let you jump between clips through any detail
- Strong acting across three unreleased films
- Lynch-like mystery that rewards close watching
Cons
- Lots of tedious rewinding and scrubbing through footage
- Loose structure with little puzzle guidance
About
Match cut your own path through the footage and solve the mystery:
IMMORTALITY is an interactive trilogy from Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story. Use the cinematic ability to teleport from scene to scene to explore a treasure trove of newly unearthed footage from the three lost films of Marissa Marcel and traverse decades of movie history:
Alan Fischer directs Ambrosio his adaptation of M. G. Lewis’s notorious Gothic novel The Monk. He casts unknown Marissa Marcel as the infamous Matilda.
John Durick writes his thriller Minsky with Marcel in mind. Set in New York City, the movie concerns the death of a famous artist and Marissa stars as the muse suspected of murdering him.
For his swansong, Durick teams up with Marcel again as she returns from a lengthy hiatus. The movie Two of Everything is a subversive thriller which explores the duality between a successful pop star and her body double.
None of these movies was ever released. They were thought to be lost or destroyed. Until now.
