Exploring Her Story

The most intriguing component to “indie” game developers is the thought that most people developing these games are doing it for the pure love of gaming and the chance to share a story and creation that they are proud of into the gaming world. There are many titles that slip through the cracks that have fantastic story plots as well as unique mechanics in order to portray the story of the developer, however more often than not these games do not get the same exposure as some of the more mainstream titles. Her Story is a game developed by Sam Barlow, who also created Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

To best describe Her Story, it should be stated that this game is of the crime-fiction genre and relies on the heavy use of non-linear story telling by creating an environment where the only way to progress is to use key words into a search engine to discover video clips. These clips were taken over the course of 7 interviews with one woman and can all be searched via the police database. The player must use this database to uncover video segments, ranging from 5 secs to 1 minute or more, that progress the murder mystery and allows the player to use reason and logic to determine the murderer. What is really special is that all of the video clips are open to you at the start of the game. This mechanic allows for frequent “red herring” moments as many of the paths you find yourself discovering will lead to dead ends, allowing for the each player to have a unique experience and interpretation of the story based on what key words they searched in the order that they found the clips.

Overall, despite this game only using one mechanic throughout its entirety, the game creates a very dark, suspenseful, tension filled gameplay experience because of the way it is presented. When you are looking at the computer screen, you can see small glimmers of your character, before you eventually discover who that is, as well as the reflection of the room that you are in. There are moments where you discover something that the game deems important information. That occurs when you stumble upon one of the video clips. When this happens, you hear police sirens and thunder booming as rain pours outside and when the lighting strikes, you can see a brief glimpse of the person on the computer.

The female actress and musician that plays the woman being interviewed by the police is named Viva Seifert. She is the only actor that you see in this game and single handily carries this story on her shoulders. During the video clips you actually do not hear or ever get any insight on what questions were asked by the police officers interrogating her. With half of the information never being mentioned during the course of the game, this leaves everything on Viva to drive the conversation to give an answer to a question we don’t know. Her facial expressions tell her story (what an awful pun) through every emotion of confusion, frustration, sadness, and sarcasm.

A core reason why this game is still being played through repeated times is the ambiguity that is created by lack of information. The developer intentionally leaves out information for the player to use deductive reasoning to figure out, causing much confusion in the community. Each player will come across different clips at inconstant times, allowing for a frequent amount of gray area on where the story is going and who the guilty people are. Without trying to spoil too much of the story, as I feel like this is a game that you must play for yourself and experience to form your own opinion, I am still wrestling with myself if I believe that the woman is innocent or guilty, or if this woman is even involved at all.

To conclude, Her Story is a brilliantly crafted mystery that takes the player on an eerie adventure to discover the truth. This game makes you question yourself at every turn, and with every video clip uncovered. You begin to ask yourself internal questions about the events that occur inside the game, and if you are like me, will fill your desk with sticky notes as well as yellow legal pads trying to connect all the pieces together.

Garon Barker