Twins have a particularly strong emotional relationship, they say. But what happens when one of them dies? Martha Is Dead relentlessly provides us with an agonizing answer to this question. It’s a really disturbing story and one that sometimes cries for an explanation.
Martha is Dead takes you on a psychological horror journey and demands your entire range of emotions. The story is about the tragic death of a young woman and the mental torment of her identical twin sister. To make matters worse, this heartbreakingly sad story takes place during one of the most tragic times ever, World War II.
What kind of gameplay can you expect?
You’ll be immersed in a gruesome (partly grotesque) but also profoundly gripping plot that will take you through dark nightmares, but also breathtaking Italian landscapes. The game is a shocking first-person horror thriller, which in its style strongly reminds us of titles such as Layers of Fear. But this nightmare is also based on actual events.
Here, the game uses the whole range of horror that we know from movies: Jump-scares, puppets, and playing with your emotions…. and your stomach. The setting is the idyllic Tuscany in Italy, based on real locations. This gives the game a high level of authenticity at the same time. Check out the latest trailer for the game below:
Martha Is Dead is available for PS4/PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. For PC, you can buy it via Steam, or, if you want to support us and save some money at the same time, on Kinguin (affiliate link).
Martha Is Dead’s plot at a glance (Spoiler Alert)
Martha and Giulia are twin sisters and the children of a fascist general. Both grow up in a fictional town on an estate in Tuscany in the late years of World War II. Martha has been deaf since birth, and her mother blames Giulia, who claims she did something to Martha in the womb.
A few years later, both twin sisters are young women, Martha accompanies Giulia to a forest lake nearby to take pictures. But Martha, unlike Giulia, does not return to the estate. After Gulia discovers Martha’s body at the lake, her parents appear, and her mom mistakes Giulia for Martha. Knowing that Martha has always been her mother’s favorite child. That’s why Giulia feels compelled to assume the identity of her dead twin sister.
In the days that follow, Giulia’s mental condition worsens more and more, and she has difficulty remembering what happened. As she tries to gradually get to the bottom of her sister’s death, the psychological strain of the lie and the stress pull her ever deeper into madness. In this way, the tormenting circumstances of reality mix with horrifying nightmares.
She seeks out the ghost of the White Lady, a woman who was killed by her lover at this very lake. During the conversation, Giulia realizes that her mother must be responsible for Martha’s death. She sets out to find evidence to prove it. Her mom now wants to institutionalize her in a psychiatric hospital, which of course, makes Giulia furious.
After realizing that Martha is carrying a child which made their mother angry, Giulia invades the family’s mansion and shoots her mom. A short time later, her father is also killed by the SS after being accused of being a traitor to the party. This leaves her completely alone and facing total chaos. She returns to her room to search for answers and lost memories in the old puppet theater.
The ending of Martha Is Dead explained (Spoiler Alert)
In desperation, Giulia finally turns to her priest Don Attilio. She enters the holy church, and suddenly the environment changes to a surreal world with puppets. Presumably, Don Attilio has received instructions from her mom to provide psychiatric personnel. This is to be indicated metaphorically by the dolls. It turns out that all the terrible events are the product of a young girl’s fantasy, generated by her mother’s domestic violence and war trauma. So everything indicates that this is precisely what, in addition to the death of her beloved sister, moves her to take her own life before our eyes in the end.
Uncover the mysteries in other horror titles
Your horror trip doesn’t have to end here. Start your next spooky adventure with excellent titles like the Dead Space Remake. The day after tomorrow, next-gen horror-survival madness awaits you with Sons of the Forest, currently the most-wanted game on Steam.
You can also find particularly thrilling games to play with friends in our ranking of
Scary Co-op Horror Games.
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