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.