A Video Game About a Woman Talking to the Police
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 Se...
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.
How does it work?
Her Story sits you in front of a mothballed desktop computer that’s logged into a police database of video footage. The footage covers seven interviews from 1994 in which a British woman is interviewed about her missing husband. Explore the database by typing search terms, watch the clips where she speaks those words and piece together her story.
Unlike anything you've played before, Her Story is an involving and moving experience. A game that asks you to listen.
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
This game made me interested in Indie Games when it came out. I like this alternative storytelling very much, its really reduced and minimalistic. Still it has lots of ambience. I really dislike people in these comments which are afraid of "feministic" gameplay. What a nonesense. Its more Arthouse vs Mainstream.
first time I played the game I thought it was boring after a while and confusing... I think, I concluded with a clip that the case was solved... but I thought I'd never play it ever again... that's how disappointed I was...
meanwhile, I watched videos on youtube that deal with the same topic (I had no clue "Her Story" touched on that a lot.) Now, I'm glad that I played it again, as I can appreciate the game for what it is... a rather interesting attempt at touching on that special topic.
so... for spoilers, in a way... go to youtube and /watch?v=A0kLjsY4JlU
that's where I started on that journey
this game has a very simple interface and mechanic, and yet, it manages to be really thought provoking and compelling. you have bits of a story told in several successive interviews, sometimes really tiny bits, sometimes bigger pieces. you can access them by searching for keywords, so you can never hope to watch the whole interviews, in order. you must make sense of the story as you go along, trying out ideas and hunches, until you form your own idea of what happened.
it might seem flat, but, believe me, the acting is really good, and the story is told in a very compelling fashion, so you will have plenty of fun guessing what went on... and discussing it with your friends.
i'm not giving the game 5 stars just because sometimes you can get stuck with the keywords to search and you are forced to go on a bit at random.
Disclosure: I got the game on sale for a euro fifty.
You have access to a database of clips of police interviews. All you can do is do text-searches on the video transcripts to find more. The whole game is watching the clips, and typing stuff into the search box. The goal is simple: find out what happened.
At first I was frustrated with the limitations. All I wanted to do was watch the clips in chronological order, which is where I felt I would start if I was in this situation in real life. But after 10 minutes I realized that this *was* the game. It's a game mechanic. Complaining about it would be like complaining that it's unrealistic your pawns can't walk backwards in chess. Games have rules because rules are necessary in creating a puzzle or a challenge.
A big design problem that mystery-solving games have to come to terms with is: how do we verify that the player solved the mystery? Giving them a multiple-choice quiz is a problem, because then the answer is right there on screen and you might give it away. Her Story's solution to that design problem is simple: why do we need to verify the player figured it out at all? The game ends when you feel satisfied you've answered all of your questions. There's really no "You won!" screen. Thankfully, the game is written in such a way that when you do solve the mystery, you'll know you solved it. Once you dig deep enough, everything is laid out unambiguously, so you don't feel unsatisfied.
I don't know if you can say the game has puzzles in it, though. I did *feel* like I was solving a mystery, but objectively, I was probably mostly just watching a clip, hearing a name or reference to something, searching for that term, and watching the next clip. Sometimes guessing with catch-all words like "detective" or "corpse". I played this game with my girlfriend, and sometimes one of us would get a clue that the other didn't. So there's clearly some thinking involved. But I felt engaged, and maybe that's all that matters.
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