So to start this off if you’re one of them thar folk that don’t think Gone Home is a game or that Visual Novels are a waste of time, then you need read no further. Her Story bills itself as an interactive story and it really delivers no more than that. A twisted little tale that comes to us from the grey matter of Sam Barlow, lead designer of Silent Hill Shattered Memories and writer of Silent Hill Origins. This is a man that knows his small town tragedies, and it shines through in Her Story.
You play an initially nameless protagonist investigating a murder surrounding a woman who is, initially, just as anonymous as you. That’s right, you don’t know any names, the circumstances of the case you’re investigating, or even why you’re investigating it, everything unfolds as you play.
It’s a neat story design mechanic. What initially starts with some outside the box, meta-game thinking (I’ve seen so many Law and Orders I know how to crack this case!) will soon have you throwing out your suppositions as unraveling this sticky web begins to truly engross you. I can’t really go into depth as to the plot because that’s really the only player engagement the title has, but I can say the game did a pretty good job of circumventing my expectations. Once I thought I had the case “cracked” there was yet another serious twist to throw me for a loop. When you finally do get your firmest sense of what is going on, and you’ll know when that moment happens, the story actually becomes more rewarding, because you can appreciate the once formless mass of clips you were browsing in a brand new light.
Mr. Barlow seems to like dealing with themes of people trying to be something or someone they’re not, walking in another person’s shoes and playing pretend. It’s rare to see a game developer “master” their genre in terms of writing and storytelling, and even when they do a game dev can easily be pulled in every which direction trying to fulfill the demands of genre rather than crafting something with an emotional core. I guess what I’m saying is it’s difficult to define a game designer by assigning them a distinct voice how you can, say, a book author or a filmmaker, but Sam Barlow has definitely crafted a strong signature in terms of the emotional content he tackles.
As for “game” mechanics well, there’s not a lot going on. This is neither a good nor bad thing, but anything it did have in terms of mechanics was fairly thin. I suppose it hearkens back to a much earlier age of video games, text adventures where your actions were all limited by the commands you needed to suss out and input. Even then you’re not so much going on an epic quest, using ‘fire’ on ‘lamp’ or ‘sword’ on ‘dragon’, you’re essentially just navigating an outdated search engine.
But then the limits are also where it shines, because then the game’s limits become your limits, and you’re forced to seriously engage as you listen for particular keywords or names you hadn’t heard before. For example entering the simple word “Diary” gave me a huge break in the story I would have never expected (Disclaimer: If you want to play this don’t enter the word ‘diary’ until you think you’ve come to a reasonable place to use it, it might spoil your experience). Similarly other relatively simple, innocuous words would open up entire worlds in this story.
I found I had to start jotting down little notes for my journey into Her Story. I don’t think anything gets more old school than sitting down with an index card and a pen and taking notes as you go. This was mostly because the keywords I was tracking began to get away from me, so it was for my own sanity I kept a piece of paper to my side and struck off words as I tried each new investigative process.
Keeping with that old school nature, aside from the simple UI interface of a police search computer the majority of the ‘graphics’ in this game are pre-recorded video. Think Mad Dog McCree or original Resident Evil, the early 90s when full motion video was king. While their lead actress is raw in a few places, her delivery is overall endearing, especially in the moments where her performance really matters. There are times she has to recall childhood experiences and it feels as though she dug deep and really strummed these memories up. It’s at least a worthy performance that begins to hook you after a few rough introductions.
The clips you browse are never too long, a few seconds tops. There are a few that cap a minute mark and often these will carry some wealth of information. Luckily you are free to give clips new tags (Butterfinger or Popcorn if you wish, which had nothing to do with anything but made it easy for me to recall searches I needed). If that’s not enough you can also store clips for quick and easy access on a different timeline. There is no “order” laid out, so it’s all up to you to try and keep track. Again thankfully nothing gets too complex, you won’t have to remember minute details such as the time of day or how many cups of water she had to drink, but certain things such as the clothes she wears will aide in identifying events later on.
There are a “few” other things that go on with the game. If you dig around the trash bin you can find someone threw out a rom of a mindsweeper style game (why you would need to illegally download that is beyond me). You’ll also get a few musical cues when you uncover something particularly eerie in the tale, and a visual cue I can only describe as a ‘jump scare’ despite the fact I’m not sure that was the intent. There is also a “Database Checker”, which serves as an indication of how much progress you’ve made. After browsing enough clips you can trigger the closest thing this game has to an “ending.” I believe these conditions are satisfied by finding certain key clips, and choosing to engage Her Story’s endgame sequence will give you one last little snippet that, if you were paying attention, provides one final chilling twist.
Simultaneously touching and disturbing just like, oh hey, Sam Barlow’s Silent Hill runs, Her Story took me for a ride I wasn’t expecting. It’s hard to class this under a particular genre, I want to say Text Adventure or Visual Novel but it’s not even as indepth as those and in all fairness, doesn’t bill itself as such. So again I stress, if you’re looking for a deeply interactive experience, this isn’t that game. The story will take maybe part of an afternoon or early evening to clear, and once you’ve seen it all there isn’t much to go back to (maybe trying to scrape out a few last clips you may not have seen). At five dollars it’s a lot more like investing in a short story than it is a game, but telling a story in this succinct way with this kind of complexity isn’t an easy task, and it does a very good job of engaging the player. Her Story sets out to do exactly what it accomplishes and even presents new and unexpected ideas. I personally ended up loving what I experienced and even loving “Her” a little, and for that reason I was happy to put my money behind it.
