Prime Video’s 15-Part Sci-Fi Series Rewrites The Rules Of Video Game Adaptations

Although 2024’s Secret Level is technically a video game adaptation, the sci-fi show’s clever premise completely reinvents the genre. From Prime Video’s deservedly acclaimed Fallout to HBO’s The Last of Us, video game TV adaptations are a hot commodity right now. This comes after years of video game movies struggling to impress reviewers.

Video game TV shows like The Last of Us have wisely begun to use their longer runtimes to tell stories that feel more immersive and atmospheric than a feature film could manage, and their stellar reviews reflect this improvement. This might explain why recent movie adaptations of acclaimed games, from Borderlands to Until Dawn, have still struggled to impress critics.

Secret Level’s Meta Story Makes Prime Video’s Adaptation Utterly Original

Compared to their small-screen counterparts, video game movies still have a hard time winning over reviewers, outside of outliers like The Super Mario Bros. Movie. However, one instantly iconic Prime Video show adapted from several successful video games completely rewrites the rules of traditional video game shows. Instead of focusing on one game’s lore in-depth, this anthology show takes the opposite approach.

Created by Love, Death, & Robots creator Tim Miller, the anthology series Secret Level consists of 15 standalone episodes, each of which is set in the fictional world of a different video game. The show’s first season includes episodes set in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and Exodus, among others.

With guest stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Ariana Greenblatt, and Kevin Hart, Secret Level’s episodes vary in length from eight to 19 minutes. Although the show’s first outing was met with mixed reviews when Secret Level arrived in late 2024, its imperfect start shouldn’t deter the creators from revisiting this ambitious premise in the future.

Where a traditional video game adaptation simply brings the familiar world of a game to life onscreen, Secret Level instead offers brief glimpses into the worlds of over a dozen games. The show’s brevity meant that few of its tales outstayed their welcome, something that Miller also managed to get right in his earlier animated anthology show Love, Death, & Robots.

Secret Level’s Approach Could Reshape Future Video Game Adaptations

While some video games have immersive fictional worlds that can easily sustain an entire multiple-season series, others are less lore-heavy and more reliant on gameplay. These games, where the player’s experience comes first, and the storyline is secondary, could be dull if faithfully adapted into full-length movies or shows.

Fortunately, Secret Level’s approach could be borrowed by future video game adaptations that want to pay homage to these classic games without necessarily telling a complex, full-length story. By giving viewers snippets from the worlds of each of these games, Secret Level offers viewers a taste of numerous fictional universes in quick succession.