Immortality

Immortality is an interactive film from creator Sam Barlow, which presents the player with hundreds of film clips from three never-finished films by the fictional actress Marissa Marcel, and lets them investigate what actually happened to her. The gameplay is based on the principle of visual search, where the player clicks on any object or face on screen to jump to another scene in which the same element appears, gradually piecing together a fragmented story from dozens of seemingly unrelated clips shot across different decades of the actress's career, from screen tests to never-released final cuts of the films.

This unconventional storytelling method demands active detective work and patience from the player, since no scene provides answers directly, only further clues leading to an understanding of the hidden conspiracy running through all three fictional films. On PlayStation 5, the game excels through the quality of the digitized film material and the authentic period style of the camera work and editing matching the individual decades in which the films are set, from grainy celluloid to the sharper digital image of the nineties. The absence of traditional game music and the emphasis on cinematic sound heighten the feeling that the player is truly digging through an archive of lost film material with their own hands.

Immortality builds on Sam Barlow's previous projects and pushes the concept of interactive film toward an even more abstract and demanding form of storytelling, without any hint or progress map. Critics praised the bold structure and the surprising final reveal, earning the game several awards in the best narrative category. To this day it is considered one of the most original experiments with narrative form in modern games, rewarding above all players willing to devote time to their own investigation and piecing together connections without any hints.

Why play it: For players willing to devote time to their own investigation without any hints, it offers one of the most original experiments with narrative form in modern games.