Her Story creator Sam Barlow's next game is a decades-spanning Hollywood thriller

Sunday's Future Games Show came to a cinematic finish with the announcement of Immortality, a decades-spanning Hollywood mystery from Her Story and Telling Lies creator Sam Barlow.

Teased last year as being "10 times more ambitious" than Barlow's most recent work, Immortality has been lurking in a heavily-redacted form on Steam as Project Ambrosio—hints only suggesting at a story taking place across decades.

With the curtains raised, Immortality reveals itself as the story of actress Marissa Marcel, a budding starlet who appeared in only three unreleased movies before vanishing entirely. This teaser doesn't give us much more than that, but considering Barlow's previous games, I'd expect we'll be digging through these buried flicks and documents to piece together what happened to Marcel, and discover why these movies never saw the light of day.

Barlow promised Immortality would be bigger than Telling Lies, mind. To that end, he's recruited some talented writers to help pen this mystery, including Amelia Gray (Mr Robot), Allan Scott (Queen's Gambit) and Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart).

Her Story remains one of our favourite games, a thriller that Andy K that "has all the drama and intrigue of the best TV crime shows, but plays to the interactive strengths of the medium in a daring, imaginative way" in his Her Story review. I'm excited to once again see that perfect marriage of suspenseful writing and nonlinear design as we delve into the secrets of Immortality in 2022.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.