Twin Mirror Looks Good and Has a Sam, Which is Very Important

I just want to start this off by saying that any video game with a character named Sam is immediately good. Take the 2016 reboot of Doom, with the robotic Sam Hayden. Or Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which introduces Nathan Drake’s brother Sam. These are some very good Sams that make the games they’re in better. Twin Mirror is another game that already looks like it’s a solid entry for narrative-heavy titles, but also it has a Sam which just makes it even better.

Being developed by Dontnod Entertainment, the developers behind the Life is Strange series, Vampyr, and the criminally forgotten Remember Me, in Twin Mirror you’ll find yourself stepping into the shoes of Sam Higgs and taking a trip back home to Basswood, West Virginia. You’re there to attend your best friend’s funeral, and there’s only one other person accompanying you on this trip: your snarky alter-ego simply known as “The Double.” Like all small towns that you flee for unknown reasons, Basswood is hiding some dark secrets and it’s up to Sam to work with The Double and figure out what they are.

To do so, Sam is going to be making use of his somewhat supernatural abilities. You can reconstruct events in your “mind palace,” which you can then use to help figure out certain events. This feature will be important to use, as you’re going to use it to help remember Sam’s past and what sort of weird mysteries haunt him. After all, you don’t just run away from your hometown and only come back to see your dead best friend without a little bit of drama along the way, right?

As may be expected with the genre, you’ll also be making plenty of narrative choices that will change how the game plays out. Twin Mirror‘s Epic Store page promises there are “no right or wrong answers”, so there’s a good chance a few of these choices may be rather difficult to figure out. The best you can do is pick what you believe in and just hope nothing leads to you getting stabbed along the way. Or you’re not forced to chose which of your two closest friends die, something that seems to happen a lot in this style of game. I suppose your best friend being dead at the start of this game at least means you already failed at this choice.

This isn’t the only game Dontnod is working on right now. They also have Tell Me Why, an upcoming episodic narrative game about twins returning to Alaska to confront events from their past that made them the people they are today. No matter what sort of narrative devices you’re interested in, there’s a good chance one of these two games is going to appeal to you.

Twin Mirror is set to launch some time this year, and you can wishlist the game now on the Epic Game Store. It’ll also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at launch.