Precognition: Sam Barlow and Brandon Cronenberg Reveal New Sci-Fi Horror Game

Aug 12, 2026

The creator of Her Story and IMMORTALITY is teaming with Infinity Pool director Brandon Cronenberg for an ambitious new cinematic horror experience coming in 2028.

Sam Barlow is returning to the kind of unconventional interactive storytelling that made Her Story and IMMORTALITY stand out, and this time he’s bringing acclaimed filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg along for the ride.

Half Mermaid has officially revealed Precognition, the project previously teased under the codename Project C. The sci-fi horror game pairs Barlow with Cronenberg, the filmmaker behind Possessor and Infinity Pool, for a new live-action experience built around seeing — and potentially changing — the future.

The game was unveiled as part of Kinetic Publishing’s first showcase and is currently targeting a Spring 2028 release for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

What Is Precognition?

Precognition puts players in the role of Diana, a woman who begins experiencing visions of the future after receiving an experimental brain implant.

Rather than simply watching these visions unfold, players will explore them and focus on specific moments, committing details to Diana’s memory in the present.

There’s a catch: remembering the future can change it.

Once Diana commits something she has seen to memory, the future itself begins to shift. That creates an intriguing gameplay loop in which information isn’t simply something players discover — it becomes something capable of altering what happens next.

It’s a premise that feels particularly well suited to Barlow’s approach to interactive storytelling.

His previous games have frequently asked players to reconstruct narratives from fragmented pieces of information rather than simply following events from beginning to end. Her Story had players searching through police interview footage, while IMMORTALITY revolved around examining footage from three unreleased films to uncover the mystery surrounding actress Marissa Marcel.

With Precognition, that fragmented storytelling appears to be getting another major twist: the information players uncover may actively rewrite the narrative they’re attempting to understand.

Sam Barlow Meets Brandon Cronenberg

The collaboration between Barlow and Cronenberg could be one of the most interesting aspects of the project.

Cronenberg has established himself as a distinctive filmmaker within modern science-fiction and horror through movies including Possessor and Infinity Pool. His work frequently explores identity, technology, violence and psychological transformation — themes that seem almost tailor-made for a game involving experimental brain technology and an unstable future.

Barlow, meanwhile, has spent much of his independent career exploring the intersection between cinema and video games.

After Her Story helped popularize his distinctive approach to nonlinear live-action storytelling, he continued experimenting with the format through Telling Lies and IMMORTALITY. More recently, Barlow described Project C as a live-action horror project co-written with Cronenberg and suggested it would be considerably more complicated than IMMORTALITY.

Putting those two creative sensibilities together makes Precognition a particularly intriguing prospect for fans of psychological horror.

From Project C to Precognition

The project itself isn’t entirely new.

Barlow and Cronenberg’s collaboration was originally announced in 2024 under the mysterious title Project C. At the time, Half Mermaid’s project was associated with Blumhouse Games, although very little about the actual game was revealed beyond the involvement of Barlow and Cronenberg.

Now the curtain has finally been pulled back.

The Project C codename has been replaced by Precognition, Kinetic Publishing is handling publishing duties, and players finally have a much clearer picture of what Barlow and Half Mermaid have been building.

Kinetic Publishing itself is the new publishing operation connected to the team behind Phasmophobia. Its debut showcase featured five upcoming games, with Precognition serving as one of its highest-profile announcements.

A Natural Evolution of Barlow’s Games

What makes Precognition especially compelling is how naturally its central idea fits Barlow’s previous work.

Her Story turned a database into a detective game.

Telling Lies expanded that concept into a larger collection of secretly recorded conversations.

IMMORTALITY transformed film footage and editing techniques into tools players could use to investigate a decades-spanning mystery.

Precognition appears ready to take that philosophy another step forward by making knowledge itself a gameplay mechanic.

Instead of uncovering a fixed story piece by piece, players may find themselves repeatedly changing the very events they’re investigating. Remembering one important detail could potentially eliminate another future entirely, opening the door for branching possibilities and increasingly complicated cause-and-effect relationships.

Exactly how extensive that system will be remains unclear, but the concept could give Half Mermaid an opportunity to push nonlinear storytelling far beyond what the studio attempted with IMMORTALITY.

When Does Precognition Release?

There’s still going to be a considerable wait before we get our hands on it.

Precognition is currently scheduled to launch in Spring 2028 for Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

With Barlow’s history of experimental interactive storytelling and Cronenberg’s penchant for unsettling science-fiction, Precognition already has the ingredients for one of the more unusual horror games on the horizon.

And if the idea of digging through visions of the future while inadvertently rewriting them sounds complicated, that seems to be exactly the point.

For players who enjoyed piecing together the mysteries of Her Story and IMMORTALITY, Precognition could be the next evolution of Sam Barlow’s signature style — only this time, discovering the truth might change it.