Her Story

[countstex]

Has anyone tried the game in the trash can? Still haven't done that yet...

[Alex79]

Yeah it's just Othello/Reversi.

[James]

I didn't find it until right after I'd wiped my save and wasn't in the frame of mind to play about with it. It's a nice touch to have a game on the desktop to play as a distraction...

Spoiler: show

Particularly a game that kind of reflects one of the themes of the story.

[Alex79]

FYI, you can do a blank search and it brings back 271 results, so I'm guessing that's our number of videos.

[Electric Crocosaurus]

I've kind of played through this twice. The first time was a fairly quick 20 minutes on my iPhone. Then I restarted on my iPad to do it properly, but was surprised how I ended up having a completely different experience. The main twist came through the 2nd time (I think the first time I was too obsessed with finding out if there'd been an affair going on) quite quickly. The presentation is great, although I do think there are some wobbles with the actor's performance (it's more the Bill than the Wire). Doesn't stop it from being a great little game, though, and a very interesting experiment in narrative.

[gallo_pinto]

Glad I took extensive notes (22 pages) as I can now relive the order I discovered everything in.

That was my favorite part of the experience too. Once I finished the game, going back to my notes and charting my own "AHA!" moments.

[Thirteen]

I like role-playing games. In fact some of my favorite games of all times are RPGs. However, I never really find myself able to actually role-play them. I tend to view the protagonist as the integral part of the world through which the story is told to me as opposed to a personal extension into the game's universe. This is not true about Her Story. As soon as I booted up its intriguing user interface with the word 'murder' already typed in, I really became the detective trying to solve an old and forgotten case. This is undoubtedly helped a lot by the game's structure or - maybe more aptly put - lack thereof. No gatekeepers tie the player to a specific path, instead I was allowed and encouraged to follow my instincts and exactly those leads I personally found the most promising. After watching the first couple of video clips I started taking notes. Actual notes on actual paper, which again helped a lot to increase the immersion. I constructed and rejected timelines, put down information on individual characters and tried to link them to others on top of the almost obligatory collection of important keywords, which I wanted to keep in mind for later enquiries once I ran into yet another dead end.
There is more to Her Story than the unusual structure and engaging narrative though. Being a FMV with only one person on-screen for the whole experience the game entirely hinges on the believability of a single actress. Viva Seifert delivers an amazing job in my opinion, especially considering that she is not a professional actress. Furthermore Sam Barlow's incredible writing helps to smooth over the rare rough edges with some clever tricks. There is a scene in which Hannah spills her coffee and reacts in a very unnatural way, which I put down to subpar acting at first. Only later did I realize that she could be acting to be acting badly in that scene due to what her character possibly tries to achieve according to one of the theories inherent in the story.
Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed by the game's ending. It is far from being a dealbreaker, but it felt somewhat awkward and unnecessary. Most importantly it broke the immersion by introducing the player as a character and thusly deminishing my personal investment. Additionally it made some of my research feel out of character retrospectively without really adding anything. If I were Hannah's daughter I should be aware of a lot of things, which I only pieced together in the game and that were in fact part of the mystery to discover. Therefore I would've prefered it if the game had let me chosen my own ending at my own time as it did so splendidly with all the other aspects of its narrative.
At this point it is probably redundant to point out that I really liked Her Story. I played through it in one absorbing five-hour sitting and recommended it to a lot of people, most of which actually already played it themselves in the meantime. Addtionally I found it to be an excellent choice to recommend to non gamers. It is very accessible while showcasing the potential of the medium to be so much more than just a collection of war games, which is a point of view I still find myself confronted with rather frequently. Her Story has no skill barrier for people, who have ever used a PC and delivers a compelling modern-day mystery that is pretty likely to send shivers down the spine of many people. Not just gamers.

Niklas Kuck

[James]

Quick head's up! The recording date for this podcast has moved. As the thread title indicates, we're recording this on Thursday night.

Niklas has kicked us off nicely in terms of community feedback (thanks, Niklas). Please follow his lead and pop your thoughts down here for inclusion in Issue 213.

[countstex]

I find Her Story a very hard game to categorise, which instantly puts it into a good light. Often some of the best experiences to be had come from games which refuse to be stuck into a square hole no matter how hard you hit them. Perhaps some of it's joy, for an aged player such as myself, is being back with the old classic text parser, if a parser more in tune with the Google generation. After all this is a game about simply typing words into a text box for a few hours. But where it works is in capturing the imagination.

Crime dramas are so common place in the TV schedules these days that we all fancy ourselves as amateur detectives, and Her Story probably comes closer to the reality of police work than most. No car chases, no gun fights. Just sitting in a room, florescent lights flickering listening to stories.

Fragments of information are being drip fed, their chronology visable, yet obscured. My mind raced to make sense of what little I could put together. Clearly someone was dead. Was this woman the murderer? The spouse. No wait, maybe both. No there's another. Is there?

Red hearings and dead ends come and go, and the story slowly lifts from the scribblings on my notepad. Connections form, change, strengthen. Truly, madly, deeply I'm buried in this case.
Her Story then. A great game. One I am glad to have played. However do I see much of a future in this style of game? Not without adding to the experience. Yet the more that is added, the more like every other game it will become.

A moment in time then.

You had to be there man.

Steve.
(Played on Steam)

[gallo_pinto]

Her Story is one of the more unique gaming experience I've ever had. I'm having trouble summing up my overall thoughts on it because the appeal of the game came entirely from the moment to moment investigating. Creating a hypothesis, testing it out and then moving on to the next hypothesis formed a very engaging gameplay loop. Like many people, I took pages and pages of notes as I tried to puzzle it all out. After I finished the game, re-reading those notes and charting my own epiphanies was one of the best parts of the experience.

I thought the actress Viva Seifert was really good and that she did a great job selling the very pulpy, melodramatic story. I don't think this story works very well on its own and anyone who just read a synopsis online would probably think it sucked. But I don't think that should be held against it. I think the plot needed to be this twisty and implausible in order for the gameplay of investigating all of the clips to work. And that gameplay was engaging, memorable and completely one of a kind.

Three Word Review: AHA!!!! The tattoo!!!!!

[The_Rooster]

Her story was a game I stumbled upon while looking through the iTunes store. I thought I'd give it a go around 23:30 once I'd been playing detective till about 2am I was amazed.

When the penny dropped on the 1st major twist I was so excited to see what else lay ahead, after that I was hooked.

However having random words written down on a pad and my wife finding it in the morning needless to say I had some explaining to do with some female names and Edinburgh day trip. But I didn't know what to tell her without giving plot points away so I just gave her the ipad and said figure it out for yourself.

The way the lights flicker when you stumble across an important parts of the story, the sound of the computer, the typing in of the letters all added to this wonderful experience. A great little game that proves you don't an open world or unlimited guns to have a great game all you need is a compelling story which was brilliantly performed.

TWR: The penny dropped!

[Alex79]

I came to Her Story almost completely unaware of what it was, other than I knew you searched for videos to unravel a mystery. It only took me an hour or so in total to 'finish' the game, and that included a few games of othello that was loaded on to the police computer. It was an enjoyable hour though, piecing together the story, working out what happened. The best part of the game though was really reading other people's theories and comparing them to my own experience. Ultimately Her Story seemed like a very interesting experiment in story telling. I'd have liked more of a definite ending as I'm never overly fond of finalés wrapped in ambiguity. I think the entire game mechanic could be used far more effectively as part of a larger story, perhaps even as a single puzzle in a police type RPG, or even a more fleshed out sequel. Her Story was definitely worth a play, but it does feel like it's more of an idea than a full experience.

THREE WORD REVIEW : Not quite enough.

[seansthomas]

Having played Silent Hill: Shattered Memories several years ago and been impressed by its psychoanalysis of me as a gamer, when the initial buzz around Sam Barlow's latest game Her Story hit Twitter, I bought it instantly.

I'm very glad I did. I found it to be an incredible use of mobile, and one which used the platform to its fullest rather than try to make it something it isn't.

Her Story is one of those ideas that is so simple, you kick yourself for not getting there first. A database of videos you search, in any order you like, to unlock the truth.

I've read that some gamers struck gold within a few searches but personally, my unveiling of the tale occurred over an electric 2 hour period. The revelation came into focus as other leads went cold, and when I put 2 and 2 together an hour or so in I had a genuine 'hairs standing up on the back of my neck' moment. The next 45 minutes were spent randomly trying words I felt may resonate with the twist, and more and more tragic testimonials appeared. When I logged out at the third time of asking, I felt like I had solved a murder case all by myself for arguably the first time ever in a videogame.

To achieve this feat there were obviously a few gaming conventions needed, namely the restriction on search terms. I'm sure Barlow knew we'd all search for words like 'the' and 'I', but it appeared that he cleverly made sure those 5 results merely hinted at avenues to explore rather than gave anything important away. Its the one conceit the title gives you and what makes it a videogame, but I had no issue with it.

I loved the aesthetic too. From the 80s computer interface via the flickering monitor lighting up your reflection when you're heading somewhere interesting to the hint of Police lights when near the finale.

The final major asset the game has is Viva Seifert. In gaming terms I found her performance to be very competent, and her slightly distant demeanour seems entirely in keeping with the character being very careful about what she discloses.

The one part of the game I'm undecided about was when she picked up the guitar to play 'The Wind and the rain'. I am a fan of two bands she once played in called Bikini Atoll and Joe Gideon & the Shark so I was pleased to hear new material and I think its a great piece of music. But at the same time, it did feel contrived that this traumatised woman would twice pick up a guitar and play a song that is essentially a confession, given her previous elusiveness in the interview room. It feels a bit like Portal's 'I'm still alive' in terms of how much it stands out from the core game, but that song made sense given Glados' continual dry sense of humour. Plus it doesn't interrupt the flow by appearing post-game. 'The Wind and rain' reminded me I was playing a game and took me out of an experience I'd become deeply immersed in.

But overall I think Her Story is easily one of the very best games on mobile and one of the more interesting titles released in the past few years. Its an original, tense premise that made me feel like I'd solved a genuine puzzle; which is something few modern games manage to achieve.