Lives and Death

Overview

Lives and Death is an adventure game in a film noir universe with a supernatural twist by Frima Studio for XBLA, which was announced on March 17th, 2012. You play a private investigator Phillip Bester who has witnessed his death and wants to prevent it. The core mechanic is the split-screen presentation splitting (possibly up to 16 times) to show simultaneous different realities where objects and characters may change leading to different outcomes.

Story

Lives and Death tells the tale of private investigator, Phillip Bester, who's also a recent victim of severe memory loss. All he rembers is a vision of his own death. Bester has witnessed his death and is now looking to avoid his fate. Bester navigates his damaged mind for messages he left for himself through the Coronado Hotel, where much of the game takes place.

Written by graphic novelist, Marv Wolfman (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Blade, Teen Titans) will help all the realities fit together. There are few characters, specifically one mysterious woman in red. The plot is said to be highly reminiscent of Christopher Nolan's Memento.

Gameplay

The game utilizes a split-screen presentation where Bester's world and reality itself begin to split, and he can live multiple realities simultaneously. These reality splits can occur two, four, nine, and even up to sixteen screens. Each reality has slight differences across them that players have to navigate, such as gravity or physics changing. An example is, one room might have a hole in the floor that Bester has to avoid while another doesn't and might have a bed placed there instead. Another example, a drawer might contain a letter, or a gun.

As the game splits to nine screens, each screen will be the same but slightly delayed. Players will have to react in each progressive screen to something that happens in the previous ones. These would be largely contextually based around Quick Time Events much like Heavy Rain. The player can die in some of these realities.

The game could play differently depending on what items the player grabs. The characters and story will change based on what the player does and what dimension they're observing. A helpful woman in red may be mischievous in a parallel timeline.