Her Story

I’ve been interested in “terminal-based epistolary games” for some time and Her Story presents an interesting take on the concept. The player is given access to a Police Department terminal with VHS clips from a series of interviews conducted in 1994 and is tasked with figuring out her story. The clips are accessible by searching for keywords in the transcripts, but the search will only return the first five results. It’s an important self-imposed limitation, because if I want to learn everything about Eric, for example, I have to come up with more ways to search for him than his name. The player can save clips and tag them with notes, which comes in handy when trying to remember what was said in session one versus session four, though I kept a .txt file open to jot down notes.

I’ve read a lot of true crime and Her Story nails the stranger than fiction quality so many of these stories have. Reality is messy. Relationships can be very messy. A premise that is too strange for fiction becomes a compelling puzzle when the pacing, discovery, and direction are controlled solely by the player. The object of Her Story is the satisfaction of the player’s curiosity. One cannot win in a goal-oriented sense unless winning means discovering and viewing all the clips (I had 10 clips remaining).

The game never breaks immersion. An NPC sends a message asking if the player is done reviewing the archives and the player can “end” the game by typing yes. There are notes on the desktop, an old-school computer game, a recycle bin with a deleted file. There is even a monitor screen glare overlay. It can be toggled off in settings, but the reflection in the screen glare is a clue itself. Background music occasionally plays, but it is low and unobtrusive and it turns off whenever a clip is played.

The achievement stats are interesting. 50% of players have “beaten” the game–that is, they’ve formally concluded their investigation and seen the credits. 20% of players have seen all 217 clips, which is something that requires a little doing, and I am comfortable assuming the 9.7% of players who obtained the rarest achievement (getting a draw in the in-game game) did so to achieve a perfect game.