by Piyoz on Aug 28th, 2016

Somewhere during his career, Sam Barlow, director and writer of various Silent Hill titles, figured out that people would want to sit in front of a computer while playing as a person sitting in front of a computer doing tedious research on a digital police database. Such a droll concept for a piece of interactive software might sound unmarketable (or worse: unprofitable) to most modern publishers. This sort of independent project is small enough in scope and scale to be the perfect indie distraction from AAA noise fests.

June 24, 2015 saw the release of a game called Her Story, the present talk of the town of the indie game scene. Her Story drops the player in front of an outdated computer monitor with access to a British police department’s video files. Some local text documents inform the player that he/she/they must enter search terms into a search bar in a browser window. Upon searching, the window will supply the player with FMV clips (nine seconds to two minutes in length) of a woman’s interrogation by the police. The whole game play is watching through dozens and dozens of short clips of one-sided testimony from a woman named Hannah Smith. Yes, just watching and searching. Complex mechanics and detailed worlds you will not find in Her Story. Instead, what you will find is sordid tale quite unlike anything you’ve played before.

To say much at all about the story would serve only to spoil the entire experience. To describe it in the most spoiler-free way possible, the police interviewed this Hannah Smith woman after she reported her husband missing back in some unnamed British city in the summer of 1994. Over the course of a couple of weeks, Hannah was interviewed by several different investigating officers as they learned more and more about her missing husband (a man named Simon). Hannah leads the police (and the player) around with loads of red herrings and lets slip tiny, suspicious details that would make any audience member scratch their head. Interested in some weird name or thing that Hannah mentioned? Type it into the search bar and hit “Enter”. Every video in which she mentions that word will appear. Investigation by relevant terms, I guess.

Needless to say, the player, after searching for new videos and finding more and more suspicious names and words, will start to discover the truth about Hannah’s missing husband. You’re probably thinking you have some basic inkling of where this story will go. Believe me. You don’t. In the world of British murder mysteries, this ain’t no Miss Marple or Poirot. Think Inspector Lynley, Endeavour or something of that ilk. A mystery that feeds you some clues with subtlety and grace at first. Before long, it transforms into something you never quite saw coming. Something out in left field. Something that gives you that lightbulb “Eureka!” moment and at the same time makes you feel a little sick to your stomach.

The visuals of Her Story are necessarily minimalist. An old computer monitor and some fuzzy police camera footage. The desktop mimics Windows ’95 and provides very few distractions from the proceedings. Note the iridescent lights reflecting off the monitor, and the flashing red and blue of police cars outside. Even the quiet ticking and tacking of the keyboard keys can be heard when typing search terms.

The writing, to be blunt, is phenomenal. The actress (Viva Seifert) hired as the sole voice and only visible character does a wonderful job with the script given to her. The short FMV clips are so packed with tiny, easy-to-miss details that tell the story as much as the actress. This is a mystery game that begs to be analyzed. It urges attention to dates, times, and names spread across several days of intense police investigation and decades of a woman’s life.

Her Story is the only video game that I’ve ever played with my parents. Bless their hearts, but most of the retina-burning, brain-melting, ear drum-tearing games that you or I may enjoy regularly might be a little much for most Baby Boomers to make sense of without hours of instruction or a course in Japanese visual iconography. What everyone in my house will enjoy without a doubt is a good mystery (extra points for coming from the U.K.). I bring this up because I strongly recommend any interested gamers out there not to play this game alone. I bet that searching through video archives and watching clip after clip while keeping track of dates and characters on one’s own would probably be a chore. Doing this with a group of engaged comrades throwing out theories and pointing out clues was a social experience that I rarely can ever experience in the age of online gaming.

For all the praises I’ve given Her Story, there are some cracks in the veneer. The first I noticed from the minute that I booted it up. Having done some research before purchasing the game, I already knew that the purpose of Her Story was to watch FMV clips to find the truth behind a woman’s missing husband. I knew that already. What about people going in blind (e.g. my parents)? The game itself does not give any goal or initiative to the player. No opening cutscene. No text box describing your mission. Nothing to instigate any action of the player. You’re seriously just plopped down in front of a monitor with no apparent reason given to you. Was some princess kidnapped? Are aliens invading? Was the president captured by ninja?

Later on, when the truth is unveiled, the player is given a small conversation to take part in. Then the game ends. Roll credits. It’s a rather unsatisfying ending, honestly. We completed the story with only half the database accessed, yet the credits were thrown at us. What was our reward for discovering the truth? What was the purpose of our quest? The research simply ends with no pomp or circumstance. With so much information left unseen, we felt we were missing so much before the game ended itself.

Categories: Reviews