In spite of my wishes to the contrary, I understand that being genuinely innovative in gaming is becoming more and more of a difficult thing to do. Even the games I attribute as “innovative” or “ambitious” are only this in a narrative sense, using established methods for delivering unique stories and settings. In most of gaming, whether AAA or indie, innovation is mostly non-existent. Truly new methods of gameplay exist, but involve the incredibly abstract, to the point where their methods aren’t usable outside of that particular game or they have trouble offering some sort of resonance with player.
That’s kind of what makes Her Story particularly special. In an age of high-budget, boilerplate action games and retro-inspired indie titles, Her Story is a genuinely fresh mystery game with a twist on gameplay. Taking place entirely in front of a late-90s/early-00s computer, players take on the role of a police investigator whose job it is to find, discover, and reorganize old footage of multiple interviews with a woman regarding a murder case a few years prior. Using a very simple search engine, you type key words that pull up a list of videos that you then watch. However, the engine only shows the five earliest or prominent videos listed. As such, differing and more specific keywords will have to be used to narrow down the list of videos which are gained from viewing the videos.
It’s such a clever little conceit you’ll wonder why no one came up with it when FMV games were prominent, as Her Story is just that. Gameplay extends as far as entering search terms into the search bar and carefully reviewing the videos for other terms or lines that you feel may be repeated. The game keeps track of the number of videos you’ve seen, but beyond the game is mostly passive. Because of this, a lot of the game working the way it does requires a lot from actress
The game’s uniqueness makes it difficult to find points of comparison — not that the game needs it, it stands up on its own — but the closest counterpart to Her Story would probably 5 Nights at Freddy’s, but whereas 5 Nights is a delivery system for jump scares, Her Story is the psychological breakdown of woman suffering from both a murdered husband as well as much more. The game, while straightforward, will be a very different experience player to player as different lines of thinking will reveal information at a different rate. I thought I had figured it out early but further investigation had revealed that my initial assumptions had been wrong and there was a lot more at play. Each video acts as a piece of the puzzle and its a interesting one to solve.
The biggest problem with the game is its dedication to the time period, which means that the interface could be better. There are two rows for videos, one based off of your searches the other a personalized listing that you create yourself of selected videos. The intention is to have important videos at the ready or attempt to place the videos in some sort of chronological order, but its mostly unhelpful. The list grows a little too long and reorganizing them is a hassle. But given the lack of gameplay in general, there is very little to get wrong.
Some may find the game boring, some may not call it a game at all. There is no fail state, unless you count not being able to view all the videos. It’s also a short game, everything can be seen in a few hours, but the game is priced very appropriately as is. As a whole, Her Story is a fun and intuitive mystery title that takes advantage of the medium in a very distinct way. Sam Barlow, responsible for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a game that just shot up in interest for me, has made a truly innovative title, one I hope that inspires others to look at better ways to bring actual mystery back into gaming, one that doesn’t involve clicking until you find that one particular thing you need.
The ABC's of Gaming 