Publisher Lost in Cult has unveiled Immortality: Design Works, a new academic tome featuring the script for Sam Barlow’s award-winning Immortality, alongside a range of interviews, essays, and explorations of its impact. With around 600 pages, it’s a meaty companion for one of 2022’s best and most intricate gaming narratives, and looks to provide plenty of insight into the game’s development process at Half Mermaid.
Immortality: Design Works will come in two editions for collectors: a standard edition hardcover, and a deluxe edition hardcover produced in only 300 units. The deluxe version of the book will be signed by Sam Barlow, and comes in an archival box with signed polaroids, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, scripts, a police report, a cassette, and posters, all of which call back to the central mystery of Immortality: what happened to actor Marissa Marcel?
Read: Immortality review – Picture perfect
Given the subject of Immortality and its multimedia nature, Design Works certainly feels like a logical next step. The game sports an incredibly complex narrative, and one with so many unique threads to tease out. For creator Sam Barlow, creating Immortality was an opportunity to cross the boundaries of storytelling forms – and Design Works will push this work further.
“I think there’s so much room in the 21st century for taking our storytelling, taking all the storytelling mediums we have, and thinking about how we put back in the intimacy, and the individual personal thing that was there back around the campfire. Things that were there back in the days of theatre and oral storytelling,” Barlow recently told GamesHub of his aims.
“I think what I’ve been trying to do in my own small way is point to very classical stories and say, look, here’s how we can make these things more intimate and personal using [the video game medium].”
Immortality: Design Works expands on those ideas, as a sweeping exploration of Immortality, and the wider creative process. Here’s the official book description, per Lost in Cult:
Printed on three paper stocks and nearly 600 pages, Immortality: Design Works is definitive and uncompromising. Read through the game’s entire script, broken up by film stills and behind-the-scenes photos, as well as long-form writing from EDGE Magazine’s Chris Schilling. Enjoy a meticulously told oral history of the game’s creation as well as unique essays which explore various dimensions of Immortality — from its inspiration to its sound design and more.
The book also contains design quirks unlike any you’ve seen before. Between thermo-reactive ink that responds to the heat of your hands and a hidden, French-folded image, experience a uniquely interactive reading experience that will bring you in close conversation with the act of playing Immortality.
Immortality: Design Works is now available for pre-order on the Lost in Cult website. It will ship in Summer 2024 [Northern Hemisphere].
