Her Story: 10 years of playing desktop detective

It’s said that the merit of any script can be determined within its first 10 pages. This could equally be the case for video games – take a selection of the medium’s most celebrated stories and their introductory scenes are typically the moments that linger: Joel cradling his daughter’s lifeless body in The Last of Us; an eerie descent into the underwater dystopia Rapture in BioShock; James’s solemn reflection in one of Silent Hill 2’s many rotten bathrooms. So how does Her Story hook in audiences? One word typed in all-caps: MURDER.

Such minimal set-dressing proves apt for a detective game that relegates itself into a single intangible crime scene: a computer desktop chock-full of archived video clips. Told from the static perspective of its obfuscated user, Her Story tasks players with scouring through reams of interrogation footage to uncover the truth behind a long-forgotten crime. Clips are dredged up using a deliberately archaic search engine. Type in any word and all the clips that include that word in their transcript are identified. 

There’s a devious twist, however: the search engine sorts results in chronological order, and only the first five entries can be viewed at any time. Players will quickly catch on that targeted phrases – names, locations, key items – return the most revealing or scandalous clips. Her Story’s opening prompt of ‘murder’ then provides a deliberate nudge into cascading narrative twists and turns. Yet, players are equally free to scrub it out and follow their own breadcrumb trail.

Sam Barlow, the British game designer behind Her Story, is no stranger to open introductions. Aisle – his debut interactive-fiction title – provides players with a single paragraph of expository text: a man is wandering supermarket aisles and is drawn to a packet of gnocchi. Aisle possesses over a hundred distinct outcomes from this minimal establishing shot – but players can only write one prompt within a self-contained run. Imposing this limit ensures an equal exchange between author and player. Setup and payoff are predetermined, yet their configuration is constantly in flux. 

Authorial collaboration is a practice that exemplifies Barlow’s entire body of work, yet not every title in his catalogue holds quite such egalitarian principles. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories immediately claims to “play you as much as you play it” – a pointed subversion of power dynamics in which the collaboration abruptly morphs into an involuntary act. Her Story, meanwhile, is a game that desires to be played, paused, rewound and, finally, rebuilt.

Searching is instilled as the primary means of engagement, both as a gameplay mechanic and means of co-authoring. However, it would be false to imply that scouring transcripts is the sole method of investigation. Her Story very much prioritises visual performance over dialogue or text. The clips you are watching feature Hannah (Viva Seifert), who has been taken into police questioning for the sudden disappearance – and yes, murder – of her husband Simon. She possesses a robust alibi, but something is undeniably amiss. Cracks begin to form in Hannah’s mannerisms. Eyes dart astray, fingers clack on the hard table. These breaks in composure and character are rendered all the more jarring as players hop between jumbled clips.

Once a video game staple, full-motion video (FMV) – which is the backbone of Her Story – has fallen out of favour with players and critics alike. The cerebral adventure Myst blended actors into pre-rendered environments while horror titles Phantasmagoria or Night Trap became infamous for their elevated B-movie performances. FMV then became associated with video nasties and genre provocateurs; catnip for some but largely expired in the mainstream. 

Her Story’s revival of the technique placed prominence on its relatively grounded approach – although this certainly wasn’t the only motivator in committing to live-action. Rather, it was Barlow’s earnest engagement with the narrative techniques afforded by interactive video that elevated the title beyond cheap thrills. Tentpole blockbusters within the industry often profess lifelike performances, yet Her Story actually boasted a live character: one whose slight tics and fluid communication styles aren’t just flavour but the core mystery for players to decrypt.

Gradually, players are trained to recognise consistencies in these unspoken communications, assembling a dictionary of Seifert’s shorthand gestures. Access beyond the initial narrative layer isn’t gated by keys or enemies but perception and ingenuity. Words are critical in finding new slices of footage and ultimately in ‘finishing’ Her Story. But it is Seifert’s physical performance that proves most essential in finding the truth. While it would be criminal to completely scupper the surprise, it’s safe to say the initial veneer of Basic Instinct (1992) masks a surreal underbelly more evocative of Kieślowski than any procedural.

Even semblances of truth can prove rare when the narrative scaffolding has been built so deliberately slippery. There is no requirement to view all the clips to reach the credits; nor will any player necessarily string together clips in the same sequence as any other. Playing Her Story resembles stepping into the shoes of a film editor (a concept Barlow would later expand upon with his 2022 game IMMORTALITY). Each playthrough represents a new assembly cut – unique and interpretable only to the individual in that moment.

Speculation and collaboration continue to define Her Story’s legacy. So empowering is its trust in player authorship that the game has even been adapted into an academic creative-writing exercise, encouraging English-language Korean students to weave their own fictions inspired by their playthroughs. Perhaps it was always Barlow’s intent for its title to be a teasing misnomer. Perhaps this story was always meant to be ours.