Her Story

In my desperate attempt of balancing between my job and my hobbies, as well as continuing my reviews in the JRPG genre, I take a brief rest from the monotonous pace my life has taken and recall a rather vague and exemplary experience I've had the pleasure to explore even if I didn't get much from it. Her story is among the many short and sweet games I have played last year and I am happy to recall it in this review. I have to warn you if it is not already obvious that if I'm going to talk about a story game, chances are it will have spoilers, so tread at your own risk.

Her Story is basically an interactive movie game where you are trying to solve the case of Hannah Smith taking place from 1994. The best way I found in enjoying her story is the way I uncovered every piece of information gradually. You are basically a user on this PC provided by the police and you have an instructional text file that explains what you need to do to navigate through the database offered to you. You have no idea who is behind the screen, you have no idea who this woman is and her current whereabouts or what happened to the man she is looking for. Slowly but surely you find out about the whole story or rather the simple facts that turn out to be even more confusing than when you first start.

Her Story's basic gameplay mechanic is how you navigate through the database by inputting keywords that may or may not be relevant to the case at hand. If you use "Murder" for example, a certain list of videos that are fragmented will show up that most likely will take place at different time as well as relevant to the topic mentioned in the query. Not to mention the fact that the computer can handle a limit of videos that show up that you'd have to be creative with your keywords as well as be more specific at what you want to look for. Eventually, I'd either get pulled into an endless stream of videos and hints of more videos more so because you are given the option to write notes about each video you unlock and save them in your own list and organize them, an OCD nightmare, I know... Not only that, but I kind of cheated after I've exploited the fact that if I type "BLANK" in the query cell, I'd basically have access to any video that I haven't left a note on which made me really lazy at the end of my investigation simply because I was getting too curious on what was going at hand. 

I was also getting tired from typing "dick", "Fuck", "die", "cock" and have a more meaningful time rather than end up at a roadblock. I can safely say it does feel rewarding when you discover a keyword that you didn't expect to find and the more rewarding aspect of Her Story is how you, the player is connecting the dots, which doesn't have much room for connection simply because of its narrative which is where we end up in this grey, polarizing area of opinions from the players where some believe it is artistic to leave it open ended and others blatantly believe it is an utter waste of time not explaining the whole thing in terms of writing.

I actually applaud the narrative choices Her Story has taken and that is it left the choice up to us to decide what it actually is about. Is it about the fact that there are twins that lived through their entire lives trading secrets and eventually the same husband? Is it about how messed up their childhoods were? Is it about the fact that the person viewing the footage is the child Eve had after actually believing her husband is in fact infertile? It's quite thought provoking and at the same time vague and all over the place where many players provided their own versions of explanations and analyses only because our natural reactions to this is the need for closure whereas for me I was satisfied by what was offered and ended it on that note. I did feel at times there was a bit of a stretch in terms of how the developer tried so hard to reach out in different ways such as the actress using Morse code (which she completely messed up bad, mind you) but all in all I felt it was a satisfactory story for the most part. There isn't much room for music since the aesthetics in Her Story are simplistic and the only track that plays is when something significant about the plot is revealed only for it to back to total silence. Eventually, the player has the choice to leave even if the database wasn't fully completed but you'd be missing out on details that actually matter.

I'd easily recommend Her Story to those that are looking for a short interactive movie that can be as open ended as a Darren Aronofsky film, minus the pretentious music and more of a shitty performance by the actress. Jokes aside, Her Story was worthwhile to those looking for a good story experience. Check it out on Steam and see you on my next review.