You can now play the acclaimed cinema mystery game Immortality on iOS and Android via Netflix. And just like developer Sam Barlow’s previous titles Her Story and Telling Lies — in which you scrabbled through fictional police interviews and “hacked” webcam footage — Immortality sees you trawling through fictional films in pursuit of a mystery.
In Immortality, you explore what’s happened to actress Marissa Marcel, who has filmed three films, from 1968, 1970, and 1999 — none of which have ever been released. The films themselves explore all manner of strange taboos, gothic horror, occult mysteries, and pop trash, working through the trends and cinematic tropes of the included eras.
You root through footage of these three films, behind-the-scenes footage, the odd personal film, and eerie motifs like snakes and keys, all out of order across the decades. Then, by following Immortality’s “concordance” feature, you click through what are essentially hyperlinks to explore related footage and piece together what happened. These connections are usually objects of a kind, such as a gun prop.
Once you’ve put everything together, you’ll (probably) find out the fate of Marissa Marcel, although there are a mind-boggling array of conclusions you could potentially come to, based on the game’s puzzle-like presentation.
Beyond the surface, the overarching story veers toward horror, murder, and eerieness, while also serving as a love song for cinema overall. I’m personally intrigued by the excess of the Gothic film, which comes complete with cultists and pentagrams.
Immortality comes from developer Sam Barlow and the team at Half Mermaid, whose previous title collaborations include Telling Lies. He is best known as the writer and designer of indie smash hit Her Story, and also previously worked on Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. His wild text experiment Aisle, is still available to play for free online.
Immortality was released via Netflix. Other indie games snapped up by the streaming service include strategy Into The Breach, Moonlight, and Spiritfarer. As exclusives, they can’t be played on mobile without a Netflix account, and are free for Netflix subscribers.
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Previous to its release on mobile via Netflix, Immortality came out earlier this year for PC on Steam and is also included on Xbox Game Pass.
