Her Story

Release Date: June 24, 2015

Adventure, detective, indie games, experimental/artistic, full motion video, singleplayer

8.5

OpenCritic

90%

Steam

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A unique detective game by Sam Barlow, the main designer and writer of Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Her Story is a rare example of a FMV adventure game — most of the visuals consists of videos of live-action actors. The plot of Her Story focuses on a British woman named Hannah, whose husband went missing in mysterious circumstances.

Her Story is a detective game for PC, and a representative of a rather rare genre of FMV (Full Motion Video), where most of the graphics are movie sequences with actual actors performing. It was developed by Sam Barlow, the lead designer of Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

We play as a detective trying to resolve an old case. The answers are hidden in video sequences recorded back in 1994 in which a British woman named Hannah, whose husband went missing in mysterious circumstances, is being interrogated. On the basis of the footage, we have to piece the puzzles together to uncover the truth.

In total, there are seven film sequences to watch, although every one is long enough for the player to be unable to remember all the meaningful information after watching it just once. To make the task easier, the game has a system of searching keywords that allows us to quickly navigate to moments when Hannah uses a given phrase.

Nearly the entire game is composed of pre-recorded video sequences. The developer put a lot of effort into making them look like slightly blurry VHS tapes from 1994. Moreover, Her Story has a minimalistic interface that mimics the old police computers. In practice, our machine simulates the screen in front of the protagonist, where numerous features require the player to manually enter a text command. The game also offers a virtual desktop that brings to mind the style of early Windows operating systems. Everything is complemented by a very well-performed role of Hannah, played by Viva Seifert.

Last updated on November 9, 2018

Originals

September 1, 2015

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Videos and Screens

[1:19] Her Story trailer

8.5

OpenCritic Rating

Game is Recomended by 93% of Critics. There are 48 Critic Reviews.

OpenCritic

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: by Adam Smith

When all was said and done, I felt that my curiosity had been rewarded rather than rebuked. Her Story recognises that we have a habit of slowing down and craning our necks when we pass an accident, but it also trusts us to temper that urge with empathy. Maybe if we were separated from these events by a window and a motorway lane rather than a screen and impassable years, we'd slow down enough to pull someone out of harm's way.

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TrustedReviews: 4.5 / 5 by Ben Rayner

What Sam Barlow has delivered here is an amazingly fresh experience and while from the outside it may seem there's little here to appeal to the hardcore gamer, if you give it a moment, you'll realise just how enthralling being a detective can be.

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VideoGamer: 8 / 10 by Steven Burns

Sophisticated, engaging, and utterly unique.

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90%