Her Story is an interactive movie video game designed and directed by Sam Barlow featuring mystery and psychological elements. The game mechanic of Her Story depends on a search engine of an archaic police database containing over 200 one-sided interrogation video clips of a British woman (portrayed by Viva Seifert). Player need to retrieve these clips and discern what happened to that woman’s missing husband as well as her involvement in this case.
Instead of offering multi-faceted investigation simulation like LA Noire, Her Story adopts an almost minimalist mechanic framing. Player can type in potential breakthrough word or phrase extracted from previously watched clips to access unseen footages. For each search, only the first 5 videos can be viewed. There is no extra help provided in this game——no dialogue options, no to-do list and no cutscenes. The focus of Her Story lies on player’s personal deduction and interpretation rather than a series of prescribed interactive actions happened within the game. Players are expected to piece together the ambiguous story through their own investigation (searching for leads, making connections, establishing theories and finally validating them).
Due to Her Story non-linear structure, player can start from any points of narration and search through the game by different routes. The core information player gets can be similar, but each player may have different extrapolation about the story. Understandably, there is no win or lose state at the “end” of the game. An inbuilt chat program will pop up asking if player is satisfied with the progression made yet once player has grasped the core information of this case. Players can choose to continue exploring details of narrative arc or leave without bothering to do so. It is her story, and it is also player’s story.
The overall atmosphere presented by Her Story is quite impressive. The VHS visual effects, the glare of the archaic monitor and the key strokes sound together stir up a sense of nostalgia and successfully provide player with immersive gameplay experience. Viva Seifert’s convincing performance augments the feeling of believability. Player can discover clues hidden in her meticulously designed statements, her body language and her intonation like a real detective——the one who sits opposite that woman in that cramped interrogation room.
Signposting system of this game is carefully designed and proves to be very nuanced yet effective. For example, the mechanic explanations are given to player through a .txt file on the desktop. At the beginning of the game, the word ”murder” appears in the search bar to inform player the main theme of this game. When an important piece of the story is unlocked, the music would change and player may catch a glimpse of his/her in-game avatar’s reflection in the computer screens.
I think there is a slight imperfection in Her Story: clips stored in the database can be accessed by typing in any words contained in the transcribed statement. So even if player doesn’t have a clear clue, he/she can still query the database with innocuous words or phrases like ”she, has, he is, etc.”. As a result, player may accidently unlock clips containing core information and run into spoiler in the early stage of gameplay. This problem can be avoided by setting limits on key word entry. Simple words and some generic words in the transcribed texts should not be considered as valid search query.
In a nutshell, Her Story provides immersive experience rare to find outside of interactive medium and proves that game could also be as complex, gripping, and cinematic as other traditional storytelling forms.