Pretty cool. For most of the game, you're rummaging through a database of live-action clips of a woman being interviewed by police on multiple occasions regarding the disappearance of her husband. It ended up being pretty expansive due to how you uncover new clips by typing in keywords and phrases into the database, finding these new clips and then tying them together with others made uncovering the events that transpired leading up to the interviews especially engaging. It's pretty short though, I was able to finish it in about 2 hours. The story itself is fine and I'm fond of how they were able to tie it together but some of these clips ended up being so absurd it had me like 🤨. I think the actress does a really good job for the most part, her mannerisms in certain clips stand out and add a lot to making the police interviews feel more authentic. This is definitely one of the more unique games I've played, and I recommend checking it out if you're able to catch it on a sale.

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.

Talked about this one on my podcast The Safe Room.

I don't mind the apparatus of this, but I do think it is poorly used here? Basically the trick of the mystery is just getting to the last run of clips, where Hannah explains the plot in entirety to you. You can do a lot of work to construct the mystery that the game ends up just doing for you. Could stand for more ambiguity.

I thought about Delores Claiborne (the novel specifically) a lot playing this, which does veer into horror briefly, but is ultimately mundane. Her Story is about women and police in only the most superficial ways. It can't really muster a systemic awareness or make that emotive. Claiborne has a scene were Delores goes to the bank to take out her daughter's college savings... only to find her husband has withdrawn them all. Her Story's direction is ultimately abstract and fairy-tale-like and it could far more biting mundanities.

I'm usually not a "wow trope bad" kinda person when I analyze media, but I'm frankly a little shocked that Barlow managed to slip by scot-free while loading his writing wall-to-wall with "beautiful, quirky woman later revealed to (spoilers, I guess) likely be either delusional or manipulative w/r/t her dissociative identities." I dunno, it's not a particularly charitable character study, so it ends up feeling just as wack as the stuff that usually gets raked over the coals for it. I guess this game's design was amorphous and novel enough for people to accept it?

I do like the design premise (though the "play until you're satisfied" angle is a little overstated imo), but I was seriously done with this game the moment she picked up a mirror and, while gazing deeply into it, started to pontificate on the nature of identity. Definitely a thing mentally ill people do, Sam. Thanks for the rep.

Her story é um jogo de investigação. A melhor forma de aproveitar a mecânica e a história é não sabendo absolutamente nada mas aqui vai uma breve explicação.

A tela do jogo abre e você dá de cara com um programa de um arquivo policial, você está na pele de uma pessoa que investiga um caso antigo e para isso tem acesso aos depoimentos, a forma que você os encontra é pesquisando palavras. Ex: você digita uma palavra e se ela disse no depoimento o vídeo que ela fala aparece pra você, em cima disse você monta todo um quebra cabeça do que aconteceu!

A atuação é convincente, nada de trash por aqui!

Nunca pensei q fosse gostar tanto!!!

Her story nota 8

Um dos autores mais interessantes que eu li em minha licenciatura de História foi Hayden White. O pensador americano traz várias reflexões sobre o que é a história como uma disciplina forma e científica e suas aproximações com a literatura. Um de seus postulados é que a História não é um mero exercício de organização e seleção de fatos em ordem cronológica: é também um trabalho de adição. O historiador adiciona aos fatos uma narrativa. É ela que dá sentido e torna compreensível o passado, transformando o que antes seria apenas uma "sequência organizada de eventos" em "História".

Em Her Story, a única coisa que você tem é uma série de eventos e fatos. Todos eles estão devidamente catalogados e você pode investigá-los livremente com as ferramentas disponíveis. De início, nada faz muito sentido. Falta uma narrativa. Cabe a você criá-la e adicioná-la aos fatos coletados.

Veredito: o único da sua espécie.

Alguns jogos usam tomadas com atores e atrizes, mas em geral é só um pedaço de um vídeo entre uma cena jogável e outra. Her Story não: ele usa isso como a mecânica central.

Anos atrás a polícia investigou um assassinato, e você tá assistindo aos depoimentos gravados da esposa, acusada de ser a assassina. Mas não tem como simplesmente ver todos os vídeos do jeito que quiser. É um banco de dados com muitos clipes (entre 5 segundos e 2 minutos cada) e você tem que buscar por palavra-chave, tipo o YouTube só que bem mais limitado.

Toda a graça está no roteiro bem escrito pra caralho por Sam Barlow, e na atuação impecável de Viva Seifert. Dá pra zerar em uma sentada (literalmente 1~2h de jogo pra descobrir os principais spoilers e considerar o jogo 'zerado', o que mais vier depois disso é lucro) mas gostei tanto que quis extrair absolutamente tudo que ele tinha a oferecer. E lá se foram quase 20h assistindo, catalogando e anotando cada detalhe.

Não me arrependo de nada. Com certeza, o único jogo do tipo que já vi na vida. E é muito bem feito. Espero que eu consiga jogar mais coisas como ele no futuro. Aguardo com carinho.

Decided to play through this after finishing Immortality, and while I think Immortality is the far more interesting game and executes on the idea of piecing together a nonlinear narrative from random clips better than Her Story, I still enjoyed my time with it. I think the mystery itself ended up being fairly mundane, but I thought the actress' unemotional demeanor obfuscated some of the blandness of the mystery. You could never really tell what she was thinking or if she was lying or telling the truth and that kept me plugging away at trying to figure out what was going on. Overall, there are worse ways to kill 2 hours.

Also there was an unintentional jumpscare for me the first time there is a reflection and it spooked me more than most horror games do and I feel very silly looking back at it...but damn it got me for some reason...

I managed to discourage myself from engaging with Her Story for quite a while, because I'd seen many people relate that they'd stumbled upon the solution "early" after having a cunning insight or lucky guess. After playing it, I feel like this was totally intentional: that the game paces itself, so to speak, such that any order you attack it will produce a viable story structure and "aha!" moments. It's not stingy with its clues, instead trusting the player to self-pace. The more I think about it, that's a really impressive magic trick.

My wife and I played it together--probably the best way to play it, really, in a group tossing out keywords. We got all the key scenes and the prompt to finish having seen (iirc) just under half the clips, then watched them again in chronological order for full context. (Appreciate that this was not a requirement for basic completion.)

In a story like this, character work is make-or-break, and Viva Seifert's performance carried it. I really don't expect to come out of a mystery like this feeling strongly about the characters, but here I really did. The subgenre turn might not be for everyone, but it worked for me.

Her Story is obviously a game about detective work in specific, but more broadly it reads to me as being about research. Between piecing things together, chasing down and eliminating dead ends, and making note of every errant details, the game is able to make database trawling into a surprisingly thrilling affair, through its simulation of the work of uncovering the needle of truth buried twenty years ago in a haystack located in a police barn that subsequently flooded. This game understands that the hardest part of finding the truth is sorting through the detritus of data that exists at its periphery, and through that understanding was able to impart sublime moments; I straight up cheered when I discovered the name of a character I began wondering about a few dozen clips prior. Still, some pacing issues afflict proceedings, perhaps inevitable with such a freeform structure. By my count the game has two major reveals, and I had found both by the time I had seen 50% of the database. By the time I hit 75%, I felt I had sufficient context for the reveals, and trying to push onward to 100% was exhausting, having run out of leads and having already found numerous eight second long clips featuring only a single word. I gave up, and while I still find that frustrating as a whole, I’ll admit that there’s a fitting aspect to it; at the end of the day, there’s only so much certainty the truth can ever have and eventually you’ll have to go home hoping that you've at least uncovered enough.

it's a really cool concept that slowly uncovers a story that i think is pretty interesting? but it's the way that the discovery happens that is both really cool and then really boring. Just scrounging through an archive damaged by time and neglect in order to find a truth for some reason using only your mind and any sort of clue that you pick up on through watching these random clips is fucking incredible, because it feels like real detective and puzzling work! It's awesome for that!
At the same time, it feels like there's a point where the discovery becomes bland and aimless, and it's when you stumble on some of the big reveal clips, especially the ones that happen in the last session (or if you're paying a little more than usual attention, just throughout the story). Once some of these bigger revelations are revealed, it kind of becomes a slog to get through? There's no more real purpose to discover the full story, to aimlessly click through and type and search and click through and repeatedly find the same clip over and over again, especially because the game really is aimless in how you're supposed to progress through things. I say aimless, but it feels more like a purposeful lack of direction. It's frustrating only because it can be really easy to just get stuck, and loop around because you're just really not quite sure exactly what to look up. The story also is a bit too ambiguous in its morals for my taste? It's not clear what you're looking for until like, the very end when the chat window pops up, and even then there's no real closure that happens. Without spoiling anything, it makes no sense why the chatbox says what it says in the end.

This game is cool mostly because of the novelty of just sloggish detective work combined with the unsettling images of faces that appear every now and then while you're searching. The story is middlesome and kinda reminded me of 12 Minutes in the sense of being a story more for the shock value of it, rather than actually saying something interesting. And even if it wanted to, the medium that it goes for becomes sloggish and made me really just, not care by the end of it.

Something I find very interesting is how a lot of the reviews I'm seeing for this game are about the story, about the writing, or about the performance of the main character. And criticisms of those things are fair, sure.

But for me, when I think of Her Story, I don't remember the story. Really at all. What I remember is a sensation. The sensation of clawing and scrounging through a poorly formatted database, looking for answers, roughly assembling meaning out of snippets of conversation.

That's a sensation I found really, really engaging.

Unique and interesting way to dissect a short murder mystery. I can agree with other reviewers that the plot is not the most distinctive, and the acting can be a little awkward at times, but the gameplay aspect is really neat, and pretty immersive. That is what got me most invested. I recommend trying this visual novel out when it goes on sale for around $1 on Steam, as in full it is only around 1-2 hours long. Get that with a Costco hot dog meal, and you got yourself an entertaining $5 evening for the night (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

3/5

Note - this review is largely based off recollections from years back over a fresh playthrough, and while some footage was rewatched on YouTube, ultimately take the rating with a grain of salt


Her Story is a game I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, largely cause of two big reasons. One, it was the first Steam game I ever completed, meaning it intrinsically holds a special place in my heart; and two, to this day, it remains one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had in gaming: a pristine example of how to combine past and present models into an invigorating forte.

See, much like Papers, Please, Her Story is built around a basic gameplay loop that slowly engrosses you the longer you stay with it. You star as an unnamed tabula rasa tasked with uncovering the reason why some random lady murdered her husband, your method for doing so being a sultry of chopped-up interviews assembled on a terminal called the Logic Database. The Logic Database operates very simply- type in keywords to spawn a set of videos that extensively used or featured said keyword. The catch? The clips are out-of-order, meaning you’re going to have to personally parse, arrange, and deduce each one’s placement in order to solve the mystery.

Her Story was built by Sam Barlow, who reportedly developed it out of frustration towards standard detective games like LA Noire and Ace Attorney. Barlow’s criticisms were that, in those titles, players were often relegated to going through the motions over conducting actual sleuthwork, an analysis I am pretty sympathetic to given the replicatory blueprint seen in such ventures as the Arkham series or Assassin’s Creed: you know, those missions where you just walk around an enclosed area trying to find that one conveniently-highlighted clue for the main character to pin together.

In Her Story, there’s no such monologuing - your protagonist is completely silent, leaving it up to you to determine what transpired + the motivations behind said transpirations. And for the majority of players (including myself), that’ll entail putting pen-to-paper in order to actively write out your thoughts, theories, and observations. By the end of my journey I recalled having around two pages worth of notes, and though that quantity is bound to vary depending on each person, it does exemplify the kind of investigatory framework Her Story is going for.

Don’t worry, it’s not all manual labor as the Logic Database does provide some tools to aid you in your sleuthing: personalized tags can be added to videos for later recovery, specific quotes can be outright searched, and, best of all, individual reels can be arranged at the bottom to construct a proxy-timeline. These additions may seem small, but when you’re sifting through hours-upon-hours of content, they go a long way towards making the experience palatable: like you’re actually assembling one of those spiderweb billboards oft seen on crime TV.

Outside of the Windows 2000-esque interface, there isn’t much to say about the graphics. Occasionally a sodium bulb will flicker in the back, revealing the feminine visage of your MC, but otherwise this is a title heavily reliant on its full-motion videos. And on that note, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Her Story would never have worked were it not for Viva Seifert’s performance as the interviewee. Going by Hannah Smith, this is a woman who’s clearly been through some trauma, yet has opted to funnel said trauma into a persona of lies: rarely can you tell if she’s stating the complete truth; however, at the same time, you can’t help but believe many aspects of her tale. Throughout the ordeal, she’ll make you laugh, piss you off, and even shed some waterworks, all while compelling you with an increasingly-deep story about human tragedy. It’s a wonderfully-complex performance, on par with the best of guest stars from police procedurals, and the fact that Seifert didn’t come from an extensive acting background speaks highly of her talent.

There’s no other extensive audio: music is relegated to a single track played on repeat when you’re not watching footage, while SFX is your standard Dotcom Bubble dins. Perhaps hearing the police officer’s questions might’ve made for a worthwhile change, but as a whole, I can’t deny the minimalist set-up does a sufficient job immersing you in Hannah’s world, an aspect you’ll want to embrace should you wish to partake in Her Story’s journey.

And yes, regardless of your thoughts on the FMV genre, I firmly endorse playing this game. You’ll no doubt hear some j#ckasses online claim it’s not a “true” video game, but for the majority of you out there who are more open-minded, I promise you’ll find the experience invigorating.

Playtime: 3h
Completion: 100% (easy, just do it)
Platform: Xbox

I was definitely intrigued by the story and really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of searching through things and trying to piece together what happened. However, the more I uncovered about what was going on the more I realized, this story really has very little substance. Infact the main char in this game is just outright dumb. I think any 10 year old would have the common sense to not do the things she is doing in these interviews with the police. Also the big reveal you find out, left me scratching my head; in what society that would even be possible? Its completely unrealistic and plot hole ridden. What started off as a really interesting mystery game ended in a this is dumb, unbelievable story.

I enjoyed how the story is told here even if the story itself was bleh. I was able to get through and relatively liked it, it so am giving it 3 stars.

very ahead of its time I think, like in the way that it predates modern society’s obsession with true crime via netflix docs and podcasts. really like the option to just be able to quit basically as soon as it starts, but you won’t because there is this weird grip true crime has on us all that makes us for a second think we’re a detective and become truly obsessed for a short period of time. like the way the game is structured is very critical of true crime media, you never need to know the full extent of what happened here, there was a murder and you can choose for that to be all you ever know. but I also feel weird about how barlow approaches femininity here in much the same way that McGee’s Alice and to a lesser extent Taro’s drakengard 3 sisters are portrayed. it’s like weird hang ups on women and specifically female sexuality and it just kinda grosses me out and I really do think the story here would be better and have a bigger punch if not for the psychosexual lean to it and also the ending.
I thought the actress was kate lyn sheil for like years tbh

as graceful and thoughtfully constructed with its unique interactivity as it needs to be, just about any narrative would be compelling thru such an inventive frame. its just as well that the one present is just as graceful and thoughtful, one that appears benign, then slowly (or suddenly!) begins to take on an increasingly uncomfortable layer of voyeurism into Scandal and Secret. i could see this tone sticking with some ppl but for me, what i chose to believe and the way my particular rabbit trail unfolded, it ended up being a far more compassionate piece then i was originally expecting. the irreconcilable driving forces of perverse curiosity and increasing empathy for the knotted web of motive are a worthy texture and certainly an appropriate one for tales of Impossible Coexistence and the subjectivity of truth, thru stories even,,,kinda shyamalan???

Since I'm on a bit of a thriller/mystery kick lately, I wanted to try Her Story, the award-winner by Sam Barlow, whose previous claim to fame was writing the Silent Hill Wii and PSP spin-offs.

I'd always heard good things about it, particularly the lead performance from Viva Seifert, with the keyword 'unconventional' often floating around the game's reputation online. It's an apt descriptor for Her Story for sure, but not always in the best ways.

Her Story's core gameplay takes the form of a simulated 90s Windows desktop that's home to a police database of short clips from the interrogation of Hannah Smith, recently convicted of murdering her husband Simon. Using only the database's search function, you must unearth the truth by taking note of words or phrases that Hannah uses as well as names and locations that are frequently mentioned.

It's all very impressive and intuitive to begin with. The presentation and feeling of scouring a mid-90s police database are certainly novel and work in the game's favor. However, the clips you are given in response to your query only show up 5 at a time, with the game encouraging you to use other words in tandem to get more results. While this can work, you'd be surprised at how many clips repeat the same information or don't give you enough new information to be able to find them.

For instance, about 10 of those clips are just Hannah answering yes and no to a lie detector, with no feasible way to access them other than brute forcing the search function in order to get them in rotation, something I had to do by the game's end in order to complete the database.

No disrespect to Viva herself, but her performance as Hannah is... spotty. There are certainly parts where she gives great delivery, but also other parts that feel a bit wooden? In fairness, though, due to the nature of the story as it unravels, one could argue that some of that woodenness is intentional, but that remains to be seen.

As for the 'mystery' as a whole, unlocking the various twists and turns by yourself, sometimes by accident, can be rewarding. However, when you look at the narrative in its entirety, it's safe to say that some of Sam's Silent Hill-isms carried over. It's hard to explain without spoilers but you'll know it when you hear it.

All in all, Her Story can be a fun and engaging exercise in presentation and investigation, but also a frustrating and messy one too.

6/10

Não sei se considero Her Story um jogo de fato, pois apesar de ser uma obra interativa com finalidade de entreter, não há como vencer ou perder.

O título é ambientado nos anos 90 e permite você acessar o banco de dados da polícia por um computador, em busca de vídeos sobre uma mulher acusada de assassinato, sem nenhuma explicação prévia (dependendo apenas de arquivos de texto readme explicando a mecânica). São mais de 200 vídeos para buscar e assistir, se assemelhando à uma espécie de puzzle pois você deve organizá-los à seu favor para procurar as respostas que surgem como "Quem é esta moça? o que ela fez? por que ela fez? como ela fez e contra quem?"

É um jogo que te permite interpretar das mais diversas formas e você só o termina quando estiver satisfeito. Há uma forma correta de "terminar" o jogo mas você só descobre ao decorrer da gameplay.

Sam Barlow, desenvolvedor de Her Story, criou com este título, uma forma nova de contar histórias. Porém, nada seria tão bom se não fosse a bela atuação de Viva Seifert, atriz que interpreta a moça dos vídeos.

Recomendo jogar com um ou mais amigos, acompanhado de uma folha ou caderninho. Foi o que fiz e mudou completamente minha experiência. Bolar teorias e explicações junto com outras pessoas cria uma imersão que nunca vi em outros jogos.

Infelizmente é uma sensação que só se sente uma vez. Difícil ter outro jogo com o mesmo sentimento que Her Story trouxe.

Recomendo 100%

Her Story is an interesting format for an FMV. I really enjoyed this game. It's well focused and has enough little bits to keep you going. It isn't perfect though. The pacing can be strange if you aren't used to keyword searching and you can accidentally spoil the ending if you're really good at guessing the right keywords or are typing things at random. Overall however It's enjoyable and I think it earned the awards it's won. Especially since it did some things that were very new at the time and did them pretty well.