Developer: Half Mermaid Productions
Publisher: Half Mermaid Productions
Available On: Android, iOS, macOS, PC, and Xbox Series X|S
Reviewed on iOS
Every now and then there’s an indie game that comes along, stops you in your tracks, and makes you realize that you’ve never played something quite like it before. Immortality is one such game. Presented as an archived collection of fictional live-action film recordings, Immortality tasks you with scrubbing through three films in various states of production. There’s a mystery to solve, which is made clear by an introductory tutorial, but after that, you’re left to figure out everything for yourself. Admittedly, I don’t think this game will be for everyone, but for fans of cinema and the process by which films are created, this is a truly remarkable thrill ride that’s bound to leave an impression long after the credits roll.
Immortality asks a simple question: what happened to Marissa Marcel? A young actress destined for greatness, Marissa found leading roles in three films between 1968 and 1999. However, while all three films were shot, they were also met with tragedy in one form or another and never saw the light of day. It’s up to you to scrub through audition tapes, chemistry tests, unfinished scenes from the trio of films, and interviews with the cast and crew in order to look for anything that could serve as an answer to Marissa’s eventual disappearance. There’s no checklist of objectives or any sort of acknowledgment when you’ve stumbled upon something essential to the mystery, so you’re forced to truly pay attention to everything you see and work towards an understanding of events on your own.
Personally, I think this is what makes Immortality such an incredible experience. While there are countless video games that present themselves as mysteries, almost all of them lead you toward the conclusion, essentially removing any genuine feeling of detective work from the player. With Immortality, every revelation feels like a lightbulb moment. Every discovery and connection made is entirely due to your own curiosity, experimentation, and ability to take the information you’re seeing and hearing and connect the dots. I ended up taking notes while playing this game and writing down theories and potential connections I uncovered, and let me tell you, no game has ever made me feel this smart, and few have made me this invested.
The way the footage is presented and uncovered takes a little bit of getting used to, but once it clicks it becomes second nature. You start off with a single clip to examine. You can play, pause, rewind, and fast forward at any moment, but what makes this truly interesting is the ability to perform match cuts. For those unfamiliar with a match cut, it’s a film term for when a transition between two scenes match, such as one scene ending on a glass and then cutting to a new scene with a different glass in the same position. Match cutting is how you unlock new clips in Immortality. Pausing a clip allows you to zoom in to any point on the screen and immediately get taken to another clip that matches it. You can match cut faces, objects, animals, and more and the fact that there are clips spanning the production of three different films means you never know exactly what you’re going to come across next.
This also means the story is delivered to you in a non-linear fashion. You might start with scenes from one film, but depending on what you perform a match cut with you could end up in a scene from one of the other films, or from something a little more candid and behind-the-scenes. It’s a little disorienting at first, but it actually builds on the feeling of discovery and forces you to consider the big picture (no pun intended) instead of hyper-focusing on one aspect. This non-linear form of storytelling works wonders since sometimes understanding one clip from one movie won’t be possible without the knowledge you learn from a different clip. As you unlock more clips throughout the game, you’re able to return to your database and replay any of them. It’s absolutely vital to go back and rewatch previous clips as you make more discoveries because sometimes something that seems innocuous on a first viewing ends up being a crucial revelation combined with later knowledge.
One of the best ways to unlock more clips is to focus on match-cutting one thing until you stop receiving new clips. Focusing on one person’s face, or a recurring background object is a great way to be presented with new clips, although sometimes you’re bound to see something else that looks important or interesting and want to see where that rabbit hole leads. The game does keep track of the types of things you’re match-cutting, so if you want to pick up or put down a thread you can easily return to the archive to do so. This becomes very important as you start to unlock more clips and see recurring items or people and realize they’ve been featured in past clips which might lead to a new line of match cuts and information to uncover.
Aside from being a great mystery that actually makes you feel like a detective piecing together clues, it’s also really interesting piecing together the plots of the three different films. While the disappearance of Marissa is the driving force behind the experience, I also found myself getting sucked into the stories of the films she starred in and became obsessed with connecting those threads. The first film, “Ambrosio”, is a religious drama about a priest who falls into forbidden love with a mysterious new female pupil, played by Marissa. “Minsky”, the second of the trio of films, is a whodunnit set in the underground art scene where Marissa’s character is the lead suspect. Lastly, “Two of Everything” is a mind-bending thriller about a famous pop star and her body double, featuring Marissa in dual roles. All three films have genuinely interesting plotlines and uncovering how they all play out, piece by piece, is an incredibly rewarding experience.
One of the biggest highlights of the game is the performance of Marissa Marcel by Manon Gage. Performing a character that’s performing multiple characters has to be a challenge, but Gage makes it look so effortless. The way she balances not only the characters Marcel is playing in the three films, but Marcel herself is extraordinary. Watching her work through multiple takes of a scene, play around with different ways to deliver her lines, and search for the truth in each role is done in such a realistic manner that it’s easy to forget this whole thing is fictional. I honestly felt like I was watching real archival footage of a renowned actress working through her method in what could have been three legendary classic films. Other standout performances include Mile Szanto and Jascha Slesers who play the priest and a village girl respectively in “Ambrosio”, Ty Molbak who plays the detective in “Minsky”, and Jocelin Donahue who has a quietly terrifying role in the final film, “Two of Everything.”
Lastly, while I refuse to spoil anything in regard to the secrets and mysteries you uncover over the course of the game, it is worth mentioning that there is some graphic and unsettling content in both the films and the events that take place while filming them. Incest, sexual assault, and suicide are prominent themes in a few of the films, and there’s some heavy and serious subject matter that happens behind the scenes as well. There’s also a surprising amount of graphic nudity, which makes sense in the context of the three films, but can be quite shocking when you match cut into a scene with two actors going at it. While I wholeheartedly stand by the merits of this game as an incredibly realized masterpiece of mystery, some of this extreme content is heavy enough that I would recommend skipping the game if any of what I’ve described sounds like too much for you. Taking care of your mental health is more important.
FINAL VERDICT
Put simply, Immortality is one of the best games of the year. It provides a haunting and intriguing mystery to uncover that has full faith in the player to piece it together for themselves. It’s a stunning work of live-action puzzle-solving that spans nearly three decades of archival footage to comb through. Between interviews with the cast and crew, scenes from three unreleased films, and illuminating behind-the-scenes glimpses of their production, Immortality presents a multiple-decade-spanning story of fame, love, and loss that relies on the player’s perception and deduction to put together. Along with a masterful lead performance, an incredibly talented supporting cast, and an addicting and unique gameplay loop, Immortality stands out as one of the most distinctly original games of 2022 and is a must-play for those who wish to truly solve a complex mystery.
– Zack Burrows
Sight-In Games 