Sam Barlow and Brandon Cronenberg Team Up for Switch 2 Horror Precognition

Two Very Distinct Creative Voices, One Very Unsettling Game

Some collaborations make immediate, obvious sense. This is one of them. Kinetic Publishing and Half Mermaid Productions have officially announced Precognition, a new horror game pairing Sam Barlow, creator of the lauded FMV titles Immortality and Her Story, with Brandon Cronenberg, the filmmaker responsible for Possessor and Infinity Pool. The game is confirmed for Nintendo Switch 2, with a Spring 2028 release window attached.

For anyone who has spent time with Barlow’s previous work, the premise will feel familiar in the best way. Precognition follows Diana, a woman who receives an experimental brain implant that grants her visions of the future. Players explore those visions and commit specific moments to Diana’s memory in the present, with the idea that doing so can ripple forward and alter what eventually happens. It is, in other words, cause-and-effect storytelling wrapped inside a non-linear FMV structure, which is the kind of sentence that should immediately get Immortality fans paying close attention.

The game was previously teased only as “Project C,” so today’s full reveal fills in a lot of blanks at once.

What Barlow and Cronenberg Are Going for

Barlow spoke directly about the design ambition behind the project in a statement provided alongside the announcement. “We’ve really been trying to test the limits of non-linear storytelling, focusing on how the game feels to play, while encouraging player agency and freedom,” he said. “We’ve pushed ourselves even harder with Precognition by bringing the feel of investigation and mystery games into a world of cause-and-effect, with a story that spins out as a consequence of your choices.”

That framing, investigation and mystery filtered through cause-and-effect mechanics, suggests Precognition is trying to do something structurally more complex than either Her Story or Immortality. Those games rewarded careful, patient observation. Precognition sounds like it wants to add a layer of consequence on top of that.

Cronenberg’s contribution to the project makes a different kind of sense when you hear him explain it. “The films I make tend to be subjective and experiential, with the horror emerging as one person’s perspective of the world warps around them,” he said. “The games that Sam and the team have made over the years are subjective experiences by their very nature. No two people will have the same experience with them. So it’s the perfect place to explore these themes further.”

Cronenberg has made a career out of body horror that operates from the inside out, the horror rooted in how a protagonist perceives and processes their reality rather than in external monsters or threats. That sensibility fits Barlow’s style of game design about as naturally as anything could.

Spring 2028 Is a Long Way Off

The confirmed Switch 2 release is good news for Nintendo players, though the Spring 2028 target means there is a substantial wait ahead. That is nearly two years from now, which leaves plenty of time for more footage, more details about the cast and story, and presumably more than a few trailers designed to create maximum unease.

As reported by Nintendo Life, no additional platforms were specified in the announcement beyond Switch 2. Questions about physical release formats, whether that means a full card or a game-key card, remain open given how far out the launch still sits.

For now, the pairing of Barlow’s intricate FMV architecture with Cronenberg’s particular brand of subjective, warping horror is more than enough to warrant attention. Spring 2028 is the target, and Precognition already has a lot to live up to from both sides of this collaboration.