Her Story

Vale mais pela proposta que pela execução, que falha em guiar o jogador em meio a uma narrativa que seria melhor disposta de forma linear.

"Her Story" it's an interesting game. "Interesting" is a right word, because I can't call it good. But I think it is worth playing. Once, because later there is nothing to do.

It tells a story of a murder. But the player's goal isn't to reveal who was a murderer, but to know the story of victim's wife (murder happened way back). Telling more would be a spoiler.

After running a game you get access to the system that allows you to view short snippets of aforementioned woman interrogation. You can view them by searching a keywords, but for one search you can only view five of them, so you have to combine and be smart with choosing them. Of course this system can work in the way that you accidentally find the ending of the story almost at the beginning.

Anyway the strongest point of this game is that it should make you think. I think that almost every person who finished the game looked at the Internet to see what other people are thinking about it's ending and overall story. And there is plenty to read. I also think that the woman who plays main heroine did an awesome job, she really sold me on this character.

"Her story" is short (I can't imagine playing it more than three hours and that's a stretch) and is a game which you are playing just once. Once you know the story there is no incentive to try again, because entering different words would change nothing. It's an interesting experience for sure, but I wouldn't call it even candidate to be a classic.

Her Story is a story driven game where you are trawling through an old police video archive to learn about Simon's murder. His wife (or is she really as she seems?) appears in all the videos which vary in length; around 5 seconds to 1.5 minutes.

You watch the videos and try to pick out key terms from the dialogue. You then type these in to the search bar to view more videos. The results are capped at 5 videos, so in this case, you will need to specify a more specific criteria.

From the video snippets, you learn about the woman's family and friends and her relationship with her sister. It's hard to go into more detail without giving away spoilers. After all, this “game” is just videos of a woman talking about her life.

Since you are viewing the clips in a random order, the information is harder to make sense of, especially since there is a few complex relationships and things aren't quite what you assume. Also, you only hear the woman's responses; you never hear the question she has been asked.

After viewing a certain amount of footage (or maybe it was time based), a chat client pops up asking if you have had enough. If you respond that you have finished, the game ends. At this point, you find out who you are, but the mystery of Simon's death may not be resolved.

Even if you view all the videos and think you have a decent grasp on the story, there are a few aspects of it which are up for debate. The ambiguity in stories like this can work both ways. Some people love debates which these stories create, whereas others want a firm conclusion. I think this aspect will sway whether you consider this to be a good experience or not.

Personally, I found this intriguing, but overall, I think I'm a bit on-the-fence. I would have preferred a clearer story, but found it much better than all the other story-driven experiences.

Great, and very unique game. I sort of almost ruined the game by typing random search words early on and finding out who did it, but uncovering the rest of the story is still very much worth it. So many moments that i had chills running down my spine. Really cool 90's aesthetic to the interface and sounds. The acting is suberb, and everysingle detail seems to have been studied in order to make the final picture make sense. I also really enjoy how it is open to interpretation. Hard to talk about it without spoiling it, but i would definitly recommend it to anyone who enjoys adventure/detective games.

I little tough to rate and I've settled with 3 Stars but this is definitely something I recommend people play. Sure it's only a couple of hours long and has no replay value at all but for a short while it's a compelling and unique experience. There are no other games like this and it was brave to even develop it in the first place. As the other reviews have stated it's difficult to really say anything about the game without spoiling it.

This is a difficult one to review, really; any spoilers will be completely pointless for anybody that's played the game and will completely ruin the experience for anybody that hasn't.

Her Story puts you in front of a computer mocked up to look like Windows 95, and presents you with a database of 271 videos, ranging from anywhere between 2 seconds and 2 minutes in length, all of which feature a woman being interviewed by police over seven different days. You can search through the database with keywords, as the game demonstrates to you by giving you your first search term - 'murder'. Your quest is to trawl through these videos to find out what happened to the woman's husband, either by searching for words you know will be relevant to a murder investigation, or by learning new terms that are relevant to the woman's life by watching the videos you've already found.

It doesn't sound like much, but gradually unraveling the strands of the plot is utterly enthralling - I thought about 15-20 minutes had passed when I looked at a clock and realized I'd been playing it for an hour. Telling you any more than that would be doing the game a disservice, really; the power of the game comes from pulling together the disparate, non-chronological strands you find and trying to work out what happened, as the game continues to hint gently at major bombshells. On two separate occasions I was convinced I'd figured out what the key to the plot was, only to be rebuffed by finding no results to my search terms, or to find that the word I was searching for was only returning very vague videos that teased, rather than revealed, the answers I was looking for. It's a great concept, impeccably put together, brilliantly acted (though it doesn't seem so at first, for reasons that will be obvious to anybody that's finished it....), and well worth replaying to spot all the clues you missed first time out. It doesn't take long to become so wrapped up in this woman's life that you almost forget that you're trying to solve a murder; trying to figure out her childhood becomes just as much of a priority.

Frustrating when you want to unequivocally recommend a game but can't really let on why you're recommending it, isn't it?