It took me a long time to understand Immortality. In theory, it should have been the perfect game for me; a slow-paced story with a primary audience of people who love movies and are a little proud of them? This game was made for me. Add to this the fact that some of the early critical analysis had suggested that the main character, Marissa Marcel, may have been named as such in homage to another mysterious MM movie star, and I immediately agreed with that idea. But I didn’t really like it at first. Manon Gage, who plays Marcel, is a great leading lady, but there’s not much of a Monroe about her, and the game’s central concept of piecing together events and Marcel’s movies seemed a bit bland, as if we were supposed to be impressed by how interesting the whole thing was technically. After a while, I realized that’s not what the game is about.

In a world where games often imitate movies, Immortality pulls off the devilish trick of actually being a movie, making the game more game-like. The main plot revolves around three of Marcel’s movies: Ambrosio, Minsky, and Two of Everything. These movies were made over 30 years ago but never released and strangely enough Marcel never seems to age at all. By watching and clicking random clips (selecting the mirror takes you to another random scene with a mirror, clicking Marcel takes you to a scene with Marcel, etc.) you get what the movies are about. That’s how the game was sold to me. This is very boring even for people who like the movies.

Watching the movies isn’t hard. Ambrosio is the story of a corrupt priest who falls in love with one of the nuns (Marcel). That’s pretty much what this movie is about, and I don’t care about anything else that could possibly happen in it. Minsky is the story of an undercover cop, and we all know how those movies go, and Two of Everything is the story of two similar women (both Marcels). Basically, one is Hannah Montana, the other Miley Stewart. They trade lives for fun, but it ends up being no fun. This sounds like a terrible movie, but if it was real and had a 90s leading actress like Sharon Stone, I’d probably like it. Still, I knew what was going to happen.

I still don’t know why Marcel looks so young (but at that point I just assumed it was Paul Rudd), why the movie never came out (sounds kind of silly), and why you guys lied to me when you said, “It was a Marilyn Monroe game. I wanted to give up. Then my controller started vibrating.

Minor spoilers for Immortality follow, but reading these spoilers will probably make you want to play. So, I don’t know, flip a coin or something.

My controller vibrated, so I played that vibration and then rewound the reels to see if I missed something bright – something I should have interacted with. Instead, two angelic figures, an androgynous woman and a melancholic man in silver robes, were projected on a screen above the two actors, a bit like Persona. I watched the clip again, and it played as usual. I had no idea what was going on, but something at least interested me. I watched a few more clips, and it continued as usual: I saw a priest and a nun kissing, I saw a detective in a gay bar, I saw Marcel and her deputy in rehearsal swapping IDs as they traded lives like second-hand books. Then it vibrated again.

I began to see these characters more closely and to understand what they meant, who they were, what their purpose was. They became more defined, no longer superimposed but dominating the screen, replacing the real actors. The comparison to Marilyn makes sense. Sometimes they would appear without rewinding, look straight at me and speak. The movie was never more important than it was.

These characters are the game. The game is nothing more than that. Everything else is a distraction. I won’t go into more (I said spoilers are meant to draw readers in, not scare them), but as you lay the cards on the table, Immortality proves to be a surprisingly clever game. Look back to 2022 and consider how long it will take to get back on track, and how much interest you’ll need from them. Manon Gage may not be Marilyn Monroe, but she’s the star who helped make Immortality a special game.