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Sam Barlow



Release Date: June 24 (worldwide)

Platforms Available On: PC, Mac (tested), iPad, iPhone

Developer: Sam Barlow

Publisher: Sam Barlow

Genre: Live-action interactive crime adventure

A measure of any good video game is how often it crosses your mind after you've stopped playing. Games like Half-Life, BioShock, and Final Fantasy VII all stand out by virtue of their gripping narratives and plot twists, endearing characters and cliffhangers, and play on in our heads days, months, even years after the end credits roll.

Her Story, the latest game from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories mastermind Sam Barlow, is another one of these games.

Sam Barlow



The premise is simple: you're sat in front of a police terminal and are tasked with sifting through the archives of a fictitious police database with the hope of solving a mystery that took place in the mid-'90s. Over the course of seven separate interviews, a woman recounts events in an interrogation room, and it's up to you to piece together the live-action clips in order to get to the bottom of the case.

A search bar interface pulls up any video segments which contain keywords or phrases within interviews, but the antiquated system is only capable of displaying five clips at a time - meaning creative thinking quickly becomes essential.





Her Story is so masterful in its simple, personal, and idiosyncratic delivery that even time wasted is filled with charm and intrigue.



Her Story's creator Barlow speaks of how the world now relies on Google to uncover information, thus it's no coincidence the game mirrors this modern trend. There's really nothing more to it than searching, listening, taking notes, and searching again.

Easy, right? Well yes, and no. Yes, it's easy to understand what Her Story wants you to do, but, with a total of 271 entries filling the system, actually doing it is another matter entirely.

Sam Barlow



There's so much misinformation, irrelevant ponderings, and outright red herrings that you'll spend hours wandering down certain paths only to be met with dead ends.

What sounds potentially frustrating, though, isn't - because Her Story is so masterful in its simple, personal, and idiosyncratic delivery that even time wasted is filled with charm and intrigue.

For example, a trail we began pursuing at one stage had the interview subject convey information about her parents. It was fascinating and we were sure it would help us understand a certain part of the wider case whereby we'd exhausted our ideas.

Sam Barlow



We spent the best part of an hour and a half uncovering new clips about the woman's mother and father, before hitting a brick wall. For almost 90 minutes we'd been barking up the wrong tree. But it didn't matter because we'd been entertained by an alluring and engrossing tale nonetheless.

A 'Database Checker' shortcut on the pre-Windows 95 desktop terminal displays the clips as a chronological series of coloured squares: green files indicate videos watched; red signifies those still to be uncovered.

What's more, each as-yet unwatched video hauled up via the search engine is marked by a yellow/black eye symbol in the top left corner - a trophy you'll become obsessed with the deeper you get, and the harder locating new material inevitably becomes.

Sam Barlow



To streamline the search, the police system allows you to log individual clips in a "user session", should you deem them worth revisiting, and you can also mark your own "tags" relevant to each video

We eventually became so involved that we found ourselves jotting down outcomes in real life, marking timelines, buzzwords, clues, suspicions, anything that might help me further down the line.

This is testament to the encapsulating nature of Her Story: it's possible to become so included, so affected by its interactive crime fiction to the point where you take on the role of a proverbial private detective, adopting the case both in-game and out.

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One of the biggest problems with Her Story's one-on-one, simplistic disposition, then, is that it's almost impossible to wax lyrical about its key feature without revealing spoilers. There's so much we'd love to divulge here to convince you just how great a game this is, but we'd most certainly ruin what made it so special for us the first time around.

The game's conclusion is no different, but, again, experiencing how the story plays out for yourself is the only way to do it justice.





A measure of any good video game is how often it crosses your mind after you've stopped playing... Her Story is one of those games.



Her Story delicately blends cinema with video games, all the while wearing its crime drama influence on its sleeve - not least True Detective - creating the perfect admixture of exposition and inquisition, which is of course accentuated by the interactive nature of video games as a medium.

Actor and musician Viva Seifert's performance as the game's interviewee is solid, and her live-action role has potential to inspire games of a similar ilk down the line.

Sam Barlow



Another plus Her Story retains is its availability on iOS. The game can be played in one sitting (it took us around five hours to finish in a single stint), but could equally be played in short bursts.

We played on a laptop, however we don't see why Her Story would be any less entertaining whilst on the commute to work or on the sofa at home - the point being this is a game that could, and definitely should, be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of technical ability or video game predilection.

In essence, Her Story is a game which dares to be different, something which confidently redefines what should be considered a 'video game', but is as profound and important as any other game available today, telling a vivid and engaging tale which is as rich and colourful as any open world sandbox; its tangents and offshoots as playful as any sprawling side quest.

This year has blessed us with many massive, must-play releases. Her Story regally joins the list and is one that we're sure will be discussed for years to come.

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