Imagine making a movie. Now make two more, each with a different theme and identity. Now take each frame, map the important objects, and turn it into a video game. The sheer insanity to want to even attempt a project of this scope. And yet, Half Mermaid completely nails almost all aspects of it.

IMMORTALITY follows the unique idea of Sam Barlow's previous games "Her Story" and "Telling Lies" of following the story non-linearly by piecing together a narrative jigsaw clip by clip. New discoveries provide additional information, and sometimes completely re-contextualizes previously known facts.

In IMMORTALITY, the main hook is "What happened to Marissa Marcel?". She was an aspiring actress who starred in two unreleased movies from the late sixties/early seventies and promptly disappeared from the limelight. She returned in 1999 to shoot a comeback film, and yet, this movie did not make it to theaters either. You dive through the filmed scenes, BTS clips, rehearsals, table reads, and other recorded content from each of the three films to piece the story together.

Each of the three films has its own story. Piecing together the plot of each film is a big part of the fun. In IMMORTALITY, this is achieved by simply clicking through faces and objects, and it will whisk you away to another clip that contains the same motif. You'll be wondering what is happening as Marissa's character and the titular character in "Ambrosio" meet at a graveyard in the dead of night, how Marissa's character in "Minsky" ended up on a wild night out in the city with the detective investigating her lover's death, and why it is so important that Marissa's character in "Two of Everything" cannot swim.

Piece any of these together and it's already a satisfying experience. And then you realize that there is something deeper hidden within.

The biggest issue players seem to face is the lack of control as to which scene the player will view next. It does feel random when you're trying to focus on solving Minsky's mysteries but then a match cut suddenly takes you to Two of Everything. The match cut could also show scenes that you have already seen before, which only gets more often as you unlock more clips. However, the logic behind this does feel weighted, and if you are shown a repeated scene, it is likely that there just might be more to it than it first appears.

To say that this is an outstanding story-rich game is an understatement. Needless to say, IMMORTALITY is one of the most unforgettable experiences in all my time playing video games, and I can only wish to be able to play this game from scratch without knowing anything about it again.