Sam Barlow and his team at Half Mermaid stirred more intrigue with their interactive full-motion video game narrative, Immortality. Immortality’s core mechanic involves scouring through numerous scattered movie clips about actress Marissa Marcel’s three films and her behind-the-scenes life to piece together the truth about her disappearance.
Fortunately, if you’re still left craving for more after this mind-bending experience, there are lots of recommendations to try out next.
10 Quantum Break
Quantum Break is a science fiction third-person combat game told in five acts. It follows the story of Jack Joyce, a researcher in a time travel experiment gone awry, which caused him to develop the ability to control time. It’s also the first game by Remedy Entertainment to introduce film into the gameplay.
At the end of each act, players peer into the point of view of the game’s villains through a series of movie clips of the actual actors portraying the characters they voice in the game. It may be completely different in style from Immortality, but a fine example of seamlessly splicing third-person shooter mechanics with film.
9 The Witness
Immortality is essentially one giant puzzle of a game built around a film grid, where one puzzle piece of a film clip leads directly to the next. The Witness follows the same format by having you solve a series of maze puzzles that come one after another without much context given, and that get more challenging as you progress through each new area.
The game features a stunning setting on an unbeknownst island thriving with vibrant plant life and strange structures. Woven into the game are philosophical sections that feature footage from movies like Tarkovsky's Nostalgia and James Burke’s Connection television series, along with other lectures and interviews displayed on a projector screen.
8 What Remains of Edith Finch
The Finch family is cursed and has been for generations. Every family member is deceased, except for one 17-year-old Edith Finch, who has now inherited her family home and goes to investigate the mystery behind her lineage.
It’s a first-person exploration game that playfully puts you in and out of the perspective of each of Edith’s family members to discover what led to their tragic deaths. The game features well-executed environmental storytelling techniques and plenty of twists, which will remain with you long after you put down the controller.
7 As Dusk Falls
The lives of the Walker and Holt families collide at the Desert Dream motel in this solemn tale of familial bond intertwined with crime drama developed by Caroline Marchal, a former lead designer of Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls, and her team at Int./Night.
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As Dusk Falls is an interactive choice-based game with a refreshingly original 2D illustrated art style and animation delivering gripping performances from voice actors. The premise revolves around a family vacation upended in suspense after a trio of brothers holds them hostage inside their motel.
6 Tell Me Why
Tell Me Why is an episodic mystery thriller from Life Is Strange's Dontnod centered around twins whose lives are forever changed after one killed their mother in self-defense. You switch between Tyler and Alyson as they return a decade later to repair and sell their mother’s house, but begin to question the circumstances around that tragic night.
The game adopts a branching narrative style where your decisions can affect critical points in the story. The twins also discover they have a shared ability to unlock their memories right before their eyes in certain places, a unique and helpful mechanic in figuring out the truth.
5 Life Is Strange
Life is notably strange in this game that bends the genres of dark academia suspense with supernatural abilities. Here you are left to answer the question - what happened to Chloe’s friend Rachel Amber? Well, Chloe enlists the help of Max Caufield, a photography student who can reverse time, to aid her search.
Just like Immortality allows you to pause a video clip and rewind to a particular frame, Life Is Strange focuses on the rewinding mechanic for gameplay sequences to shift the environment and affect outcomes that can potentially alter the future through the butterfly effect.
4 Night Trap 25th Anniversary Edition
Night Trap is a classic 1992 interactive movie published by Sega CD that recently got a revitalized 25th-anniversary release. At the time, it was one of the most controversial games on the market for its violence and suggestive content, but that's likely not a big deal if you played Immortality.
Although there’s not much mystery to unravel from this game, as it mostly feels like a simulator within an interactive movie, it’s still a solid entry in this genre and has vampires.
In much the same style as Immortality, you are a neutral character observing the full motion video clips as security camera surveillance footage of the Martin Home. At any point you see intruders trying to commit harm, you must trigger traps at designated locations to eliminate the threat.
3 She Sees Red
A nightclub murder attracts the attention of a relentless detective in this brutal 2019 Russian branching narrative thriller. You control the killer’s actions in the storyline, which run parallel to the timeline of the investigation.
This piece is more aligned with Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch interactive film than Immortality, since you only interact with the screen to decide between one of two choices. However, it still presents just as compelling a mystery filled with twists within the FMV style.
2 Her Story
Her Story is Sam Barlow’s first interactive movie project as a solo act. Following the same tone and fashion as Immortality, your interface here is an old desktop screen containing clips of police interview footage of a woman who’s a suspect in her husband’s murder. You must comb through the footage and determine whether you believe her version of events.
The mechanics take things a step further than just rewinding and interacting with objects you see within the movie file. You have a database search at your disposal for key terms to find the necessary footage you need to piece together the interview in the correct order.
1 Erica
Sinister undertones of horror creep their way into Immortality’s story. The deeper you dive into the movie scenes, the more dark content comes to light. Erica is a 2019 thriller interactive movie game where the titular character gets wrapped in a mystery of the occult while still haunted by her father’s gruesome death.
Erica beautifully blends its movie footage and gameplay elements into an immersive experience where you feel like you are a first-person character in a video game that’s opening doors and interacting with objects. And there’s a good replayability factor, since there are six different endings to unlock.