Her Story

released on Jun 24, 2015

Her Story is the new video game from Sam Barlow, creator of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Aisle. A crime fiction game with non-linear storytelling, Her Story revolves around a police database full of live action video footage. It stars Viva Seifert, actress and one half of the band Joe Gideon and the Shark.


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Utter brilliance compiled into such a small scale game. You get an actress who is only known for her music and yet the performance on display is career defining.

The premise and mechanics are bizarre on paper yet work perfectly and create one of the most unique gaming experiences of all time: a story that can be viewed in basically any order, and it maintains the mystery despite that. How many games do you know where you can start at any point and still have a great experience?

This is a must play if you have any love for mysteries.

Игра не для фанатов Овервотча, конечно...
Занятная история с интересной подачей, но довольно простенькая и не дожатая. Вдохновлено одним из фильмов Нолана.

fun gameplay mechanics but the story doesn't hold up. you could guess what was happening within the first few videos you watch, but there's no ending to wrap everything up. i actually got a bug (?) where the chat window never came back so i couldn't get the "final" credits again.

An interesting way to tell a short mystery. Had fun with figuring out the search keys, interesting story.

This review contains spoilers

Incrível, mecânica extremamente simples porém extremamente bem executada. O ritmo do jogo é muito bom e tentar entender o caso enquanto encontra vídeos foi uma experiência nova e única. Só não gostei do fato de ter final aberto, não é muito a minha praia, mas o jogo é excelente, principalmente pra quem gosta de finais abertos

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 8
Going from "the two good non-Team Silent Silent Hill games" to this is a hell of jump for Sam Barlow. A far cry from the psychological horrors of his previous work, Her Story is a quiet, FMV murder-mystery that definitely goes into the "not for everyone" pile.

The gameplay is relatively simple: you're presented with an archaic police database system, full of clips from a series of detective interviews with a woman whose missing husband has turned up murdered. Your job is to use the search system to find clips, watch them, and find out what happened. That's it.

It's not immediately obvious at first, but you don't need to do anything other than watch the clips. You don't have to place them on a timeline in the correct order or anything like that. Hell, you don't even need to watch every clip to "finish" the game. At a certain point, the game will decide that you've seen enough to know what happened and gives you the option to roll the credits, should you so choose. But you absolutely should try to watch as much as you can. Why? Because of Her.

Viva Seifert's performance as the titular Her is nothing short of mesmerising. She's natural, she's likeable, and the gamut of emotions she runs through in a relatively short series of videos is astounding. Once you reach a certain point in the story, you begin to really notice all these subtleties in her acting, and it really brings the game to another level. That Game Award she won was well-deserved.

The narrative twists and turns as well as any good crime thriller. The non-linear nature of finding the clips means that you only get the story in bite-size chunks, and your interpretation is always changing based on what new info you've just seen. It's like Sam Barlow dumps all the puzzle pieces in front of you and says "figure it out".

The joy is in paying attention, making notes of any potential keywords and finding that next important clip to give you another chunk of the story. Finding the one clip that recontextualises the entire story was an incredibly satisfying moment for me. And even then, when you've seen every clip there is to see, there's just enough ambiguity left in certain story threads to keep you wondering long after the credits have rolled.

It's absolutely not for everyone - hell, a few years back this wouldn't have been for me either - but if you've got a few hours then grab some friends, a notebook and pen and get sleuthing.