Last year I wrote about the way Gone Home is mostly backstory but doesn’t yield to thematically directed exploration. I talked then about wanting to see more games of research, pieces where the player could make guesses about where things were going and then test them out.
Sam Barlow’s Her Story accomplishes that nebulously-framed wish of mine, and brilliantly so.
The idea is apparently straightforward: the protagonist has access to a database of video snippets taken from the interrogation of a woman involved with an apparent murder more than 20 years ago. The video snippets all have searchable subtitles, which means that if you look for a word that is spoken in one of these snippets, you can bring it up. What you can’t do is watch all the snippets in order; and if more than five snippets are associated with a particular keyword, then you can’t access those after 6. (This prevents the game from being too easily solved by someone who latches onto key names early on.)
As a police filing system this is perhaps not very practical, but it makes for a highly engaging game. One starts with a prompt, “murder”, which turns up several snippets with which to get started. From there, it’s a matter of thinking of new keywords to enter. Sometimes the keywords are names or places mentioned in one video that are obviously important. Sometimes I reached them by association or guesswork instead: if one hears about a death, it’s reasonable to want to know what happened at the funeral, for instance. And, of course, the same snippets of video may be reached by several different routes, so there’s less of a premium on exhaustiveness than in something like Toby’s Nose (but perhaps more than in the intentionally unmappable daddylabyrinth). It also feels less controlled and gated than Analogue: A Hate Story.
The game also has a second level of robustness, namely, it’s not necessary to see absolutely every snippet in order to work out what happened. 80-90% is probably sufficient. Personally I had a pretty good idea of what had happened by the end of a couple of hours, though I kept playing for a while longer in an increasingly quixotic mission to find the last remaining bits. I failed to get them all, but I reached a point where I felt pretty satisfied.
It’s massively daring to tell your story in whatever order the player happens to stumble upon — and yet my experience and the experience of every reviewer I’ve read so far was that the narrative order they experienced was compelling and memorable. After playing through this myself, I brought it along to an interactive fiction meetup and watched another group of people play: they saw the story unfold in a totally different way than I did, but it still worked. (They were also so fascinated with the game that we stayed on that for two hours and never moved on to other activities.)
There are a couple of features of the snippets themselves that make this scheme work. First, they’re telling a story that is very complicated (so there’s quite a lot to find) but differently shaped from what you might initially expect (so you’re not just filling in some sort of Motive/Opportunity/Method chart).
Second — and this is a reflection of both writing skill and the quality of the acting — they contain multiple kinds of information. In the earliest phases of the game, the player is just trying to get a sense of the key people and places in the story, scanning the snippets for names to build up a who’s-who. Then one starts comparing new snippets to old ones, looking for factual discrepancies and implications. Later, after the shape of the story has started to emerge from the mist, they start to be readable for emotional hints as well. There are details — visual details, verbal details, tones of voice and choices of imagery — that only take meaning after the player knows quite a lot about what is going on. And that is why the same snippet can still function well in the building of the narrative regardless of whether you see it as almost your first pick of the game or not until quite late.
I’d like to talk about the actual content a bit; however, any discussion of the story itself is of course massively spoilery, even more so for this work than for most games. So I’m going to put that behind a tag.
However, if you’re reading this review to find out whether I think it’s worth playing: yes, absolutely. If you’re a parser IF fan from the old days, you probably remember Sam Barlow from Aisle, a one-move game that is still one of my go-to pieces for introducing new players to parser IF despite the fact that it was written in 1999 — and you may find that the game has more in common with parser IF than you might have thought possible. If you’re a student of experimental narrative forms, this is a smashing example that people will be discussing for some time, and you should know about it. If you’re more of a mainstream indie game enthusiast, you’ve probably already seen the collection of positive reviews Her Story has racked up elsewhere, but in case you haven’t: this is not only a fascinating experiment, it’s also a solid, suspenseful gaming experience that kept me on the edge of my seat.
And the disclaimer: I bought this game in preorder, but Sam then sent me an advance key so that I could play early and review it.
Go play it before you read anything else I have to say. PLAY IT PLAY IT.
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There were several points in Her Story where I found myself in serious doubt about what genre it belonged to. It emerges, over time, that there are actually two women, Hannah and Eve, identical twins, both involved with Hannah’s now-deceased husband Simon. But Hannah’s parents didn’t seem to be aware of Eve’s existence, which seemed so extraordinary that I played with the hypothesis either that Eve was in some way supernatural or that she was a secondary personality of Hannah’s. The secondary-personality hypothesis made me flinch a bit, since multiple personalities are so often used in stories that misrepresent and glamorize mental illness, and I was really hoping this game wasn’t trotting out that old trope again. But it wasn’t.
The sense of semi-unreality is heightened because both sisters are rather infatuated with fairy tales and tend to draw on fairy tale images and tropes to tell their stories: princes and princesses, magic mirrors, witches, Rapunzel.
But no, I concluded that Hannah and Eve actually did manage to deceive their parents for many years, living as one person while the spare hid in the attic: a story that is bizarre and gothic but not supernatural. There are several points where the story demands that one of them be in one place while another is elsewhere, and eventually there’s enough evidence to work out when it is Eve we’re seeing in the testimony and when it’s Hannah.
(The first eight years of Eve’s life, she was hidden by an odd, possessive midwife named Florence, which explains how a parent could have twins but be unaware that one of the twins had not actually died in childbirth as commonly thought.)
The other genre fakeout was about how puzzle-y and forensic the game was going to be. There were a number of portions where the video clips cover things like timings and alibis, when various characters were in various locations; there’s another place which includes a bit of apparent code; and so these initial indications made me think I was going to have to work out that material quite systematically. In the end, though, I didn’t have to do that — I did decode the code, out of curiosity, but it wasn’t critical, and neither did I need to make a big time chart. Likewise, you can get a bit CSI about working out which interviews are with Hannah and which with Eve — pay attention to their beverage choices, along with clothing and tattoos and bruises — but you can start to get the point even without that. My notes for the game consist chiefly of a very long list of words to try searching for, and checkmarks indicating whether I found anything as a result.
I was grateful for this. I think, had Her Story been significantly more rigorous as a puzzle, it would also have lost some of its emotional impact, and some of its mechanical focus. I like that you really can find out a satisfying amount without ever diverging from the main mechanic the game offers you at the outset.
It’s a story with a lot of disturbing portions, and though we eventually do find out how Simon died, we don’t learn for sure (or at least I didn’t feel certain) what happened to Florence, who “fell down a flight of stairs” when Eve was eight, or to Eve and Hannah’s parents, who died of death cap poisoning despite being, supposedly, expert mushroom pickers. It seemed to me highly possible that Eve had killed Florence — there’s something just too chilling about the way she says that Florence died after Eve learned Florence wasn’t her true mother — but it was less obvious to me which of Eve or Hannah might have poisoned the parents. Perhaps Eve, out of resentment that she was having to eke out this horrible lonely existence in the attic? But I’m not sure.
At times I felt that the twins were definitely a pair of sociopaths, and at other times I felt sorry for them, despite knowing that they almost certainly traded on pity.
At the core of the story is this question of the relationship between the two sisters: Eve the more confident and sexually adventurous one, Hannah a bit more shy, a bit more prudish; both fascinated by their pairing and at the same time resenting it profoundly. I wanted access to the part of the story that came afterwards — how did Eve and Hannah feel past this point? Did they ever come to resent the choices they made together? — but of course the mechanism of the story doesn’t allow for telling that, so I’m left to imagine it for myself.
The final twist establishes that we’re in fact the daughter who came out of these events, which explains our relationship to the story. I can’t decide if I like that outcome or not: isn’t it too late, now, to establish such an intimate emotional connection to the events we’ve just been watching? I’ve gone through the whole game up to this point without regarding the present-day investigator as much of a character at all; she’s been pure AFGNCAAP, an avatar for myself, and I have a hard time belatedly fitting her into a new narrative position. I almost felt intrusive, suddenly having an assigned role here.
The surprise revelation does at least answer one key question about how the story ends, however, and I’m happy to have that.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
Right now it is #14 on the Steam best seller list, meaning it seems to be hitting commercial success as well. Huzzah!
Everything ROT13:
V svtherq jvgu lbh frrvat gur crefba hfvat gur zbavgbe qhevat gur synfurf bs onpxtebhaq yvtug, gung lbh jrera’g n snpryrff cebgntbavfg. (Be jnf guvf srngher abg ba gur pbzchgre irefvba? V cynlrq jvgu na vCubar.)
V guvax vg cbffvoyr gur cneragf naq gur zvqjvsr zvtug unir qvrq sebz furre nppvqrag. Nf penml nf gur fgbel trgf vg qbrfa’g fgevxr zr nf n xvyyvat fcerr xvaq bs guvat.
V graqrq njnl sebz fcyvg crefbanyvgl cerggl dhvpxyl orpnhfr V erzrzorerq gur znva tvzzvpx sebz n pregnva Puevfgbcure Cevrfg obbx. (Gur zbivr vf rira zber snzbhf — gur ovg jvgu gur oynpx rlr arrqvat gb zngpu erzvaqrq zr fgebatyl bs vg.)
Gur ovg V nz zbfg pbashfrq ba — naq guvf zvtug or orpnhfr gurer jrer fbzr puhaxf V pbhyqa’g trg — vf n yvar arne gur raq jurer Rir fnlf fur’f arire tbvat gb frr Unaanu ntnva. Qvq V zvff fbzr xrl fprar ba guvf? Vf vg fvzcyl orpnhfr gurl’er trggvat neerfgrq?
Nyfb hapyrne ubj gur qrgrpgvirf svanyyl penpxrq gur pnfr bgure guna gur svatrecevag abg zngpuvat guvat naq gur erurnefrq zbabybthr zngpuvat va n perrcl jnl. Qvq gurl unir gurve fynz qhax jura gurl pnhtug obgu fhfcrpgf ng gur fnzr gvzr? V srry yvxr gung jnf nyfb va zl zvffrq fprarf.
Er. zbavgbe: vagrerfgvat. V ghearq bss gur fperra tyner nyzbfg vzzrqvngryl orpnhfr V jnf univat n uneq gvzr jvgu vg, naq cbffvoyl gung ybfg zr cneg bs gur rkcrevrapr nf jryy. V’yy unir gb ercynl n ovg ng fbzr cbvag.
Er. Unaanu: V gbbx gur frtzragf V fnj gb zrna gung Rir unq orra pnhtug ohg gung Unaanu unq syrq gbja naq unqa’g orra ncceruraqrq. V pbhyq or jebat nobhg gung, ohg vg jnf zl ernqvat.
Er: Unaanu ng gur raq. Unaanu fnlf fbzrguvat yvxr “Lbh qba’g unir n zheqre jrncba.” lrg jr xabj 100% gung gurl unir gur puhax bs zveebe. V gbbx guvf naq fbzr bgure fznyy pyhrf gb zrna gung gur ynfg frg bs vagreivrjf jrer npghnyyl nobhg Unaanu univat zheqrerq Rir (juvpu vf na rkcynangvba sbe jul jr arire frr Rir gur ynfg srj qnlf, ab bgure rkcynangvba vf ernyyl uvagrq ng va gur jevgvat, V arire urneq nalguvat gung npghnyyl cbvagrq gb Rir univat rfpncrq, ohg gurer jrer pyhrf gung cbvagrq gbjneqf ure cbffvoyl orvat qrnq.)
Full of spoilers, so ROT13:
V’ir frra qvfphffvba gung gurl ner n fcyvg crefbanyvgl, naq vg’f dhvgr pbzcryyvat nf n gurbel, rfcrpvnyyl jvgu guvatf yvxr gurz abg whfg zveebevat nal vawhevrf ohg nyfb qvfrnfrf, Rir’f crevbqf fgbccvat qhevat gur certanapl, gur zvfpneevntr cbffvoyl orvat pnhfrq ol gur FGQ, naq gur vqrn gung Fvzba’f tvsg jnf, va snpg, bar zveebe ur tnir gb bar crefba. (Naq n ohapu bs bgure fghss.) Naq, lrnu, V svaq vg qvfnccbvagvatyl gebcrl vs gung’f gur pnfr.
V fgvyy pbzr qbja ba gur gjvaf gurbel zlfrys, gubhtu. Cnegyl orpnhfr V cersre vg, vs V’z gbgnyyl ubarfg, ohg nyfb sbe n srj bgure ernfbaf. Gurer’f gur gnggbb, sbe bar, naq qvfphffvba nobhg gur tveyf orvat noyr gb rng ybgf jvgubhg chggvat ba jrvtug. Rir nccneragyl qvq tb gb Tynftbj sebz jung jr pna gryy, naq fnlf fur pnzr onpx gb svaq Fvzba qrnq nyernql va ure pbasrffvba, juvpu vzcyvrf gjb crbcyr. Gur cbyvpr pbggba ba gb gur gjva vqrn, cnegyl frrzvatyl qbja gb svatrecevagf, vzcylvat gjb bs gurz – creuncf gurl nyfb ybbxrq ng ovegu erpbeqf. Nyfb, jura Rir gnyxf nobhg gur jrqqvat, vg’f jvgu zhpu yrff sbaqarff, naq bayl gnyxf nobhg jung crbcyr fnvq nobhg vg naq jung vg ybbxrq yvxr va cubgbf, nf vs fur jnfa’g gurer. Naq lbh pbhyq gvr gung vagb gur crefbanyvgl gurbel, rkprcg gur gjvaf nccneragyl pna zrrg naq pbzzhavpngr, fb vs gurl ner bar crefba, V’z abg fher ubj gb vagrecerg gurve yriry bs pbtavgvir pebffbire. Bs pbhefr, creuncf gur yriry bs nzovthvgl orgjrra gur gurbevrf vf ragveryl vagragvbany.
(V’ir fgvyy tbg nobhg 15 ivqrbf zvffvat, fb vg’f cbffvoyr V’z zvffvat fbzrguvat xrl.)
V guvax gur gnggbb naq gur oehvfr obgu gryy ntnvafg gur fnzr-crefba gurbel, nf jryy nf gur rzbgvbany ryrzragf gung lbh zragvba.
Fbzr bs gur narpqbgrf, gbb. V zrna, V fhccbfr Rir pbhyq unir znqr hc gur fgbel nobhg ubj ure zbgure fnj ure abg ernql sbe fpubby, lryyrq ng ure, naq gura fnj Unaanu pbzr bhg bs gur orqebbz shyyl qerffrq n zbzrag yngre — ohg vg frrzf yvxr n fgenatr fgbel gb vairag, fvapr vg qbrfa’g ernyyl freir nal eurgbevpny checbfr vs vg’f snyfr.
Lrnu, gur gnggbb naq oehvfr ner rfcrpvnyyl pbaivapvat nf n cnve – naq Rir fnlvat gur fur sbhaq gur cneragf orpnhfr fur jnf fgvyy va gur nggvp, juvyr Unaanu jnf ng Fvzba’f cneragf (VVEP) nyfb frrzf na bqq bar hayrff gurl’er gjb crbcyr. Naq gur ivetvavgl fghss eryngvat gb Unaanu nsgre Rir’f svefg gvzr – n fhecevfvat guvat gb fcrpvsvpnyyl gnyx nobhg vs vg qvqa’g unccra.
Gung fnvq, guvf nyy nyfb unf zr guvaxvat nobhg gur svany dhrfgvba cbfrq ol FO. Qb V haqrefgnaq jul fur qvq jung fur qvq? Ntnva whfg inthr rabhtu gb svg rvgure gurbel, rfcrpvnyyl tvira Unaanu’f qvfnccrnenapr (juvpu unfa’g orra gbgnyyl rkcynvarq va nal ivqrbf V’ir sbhaq – whfg gung fur’f tbar). Vg’f nyy n ovg Vaprcgvba fcvaavat gbc. V’z vapernfvatyl pbaivaprq vg’f vagragvbany. Jryy, nf zhpu nf V’ir orra pbaivaprq bs nalguvat va guvf tnzr… :)
V jbhyq fnl vg vf qrsvavgryl gjvaf.
Gur xrl zbarl fubg ivqrb vf jurer Rir gnyxf nobhg bar bs gurz sbezhyngvat na nyvov sbe gur bgure bar (frnepu “nyvov” — guvf vf bar bs gubfr ovgf jurer lbh pna whzc gb gur nafjre gb gur zlfgrel irel rneyl ba ol punapr). Tynftbj, nf cbvagrq bhg va n qvssrerag ivqrb, qhr gb gur ubfcvgny erpbeq qrsvavgryl unccrarq. Vs vg jnf bayl bar crefba, vg jbhyq znxr vg vzcbffvoyr sbe ure gb or ng gur zheqre qhevat gur gvzr vg bppheerq.
Fb jul qvq fur qb vg? Nf V haqrefgbbq vg gur ‘gjva crefbanyvgl’ guvat jnf n (irel rssrpgvir) erq ureevat, gurl ner va snpg gjvaf, ohg V qvqa’g haqrefgnaq jul Rir xvyyrq Fvzba. Wrnybhfl? Jung jnf vg nobhg gur zveebe gung znqr ure fanc? V nz cebonoyl zvffvat n srj xrl ivqrbf. Ol gur jnl, va gur perqvgf vg zragvbaf na nqzva bcgvba naq n enaqbz ivqrb bcgvba ohg V pbhyqa’g svther bhg ubj gb npgvingr gurz.
Gur zveebe jnf n fcrpvny tvsg sebz Fvzba gb Unaanu. Jura Unaanu (cergraqvat gb Rir) fnj Rir orvat tvira gur fnzr tvsg, onfvpnyyl qbvat n znwbe ebznagvp trfgher gb Rir, vaqvpngvat n znwbe nssnve — fur fanccrq naq xvyyrq Fvzba.
Bu, bs pbhefr – sbe fbzr ernfba V sbetbg Fvzba jnf gur bar guvat gurl qvqa’g funer jvgu rnpu bgure.
Gur pbzznaqf ner nqzva_haybpx naq nqzva_enaqbz.
Nyfb, vs nalbar vf fgvyy zvffvat n fznyy pyhfgre bs ivqrbf, gel “lrf” naq “ab” (zhfg hfr qbhoyr dhbgrf). Gurfr ner sebz gur yvr-qrgrpgbe grfg naq vg trgf lbh nobhg rvtug bs gurz. Fvzcyl frnepuvat lrf, ab, ‘lrf’, be ‘ab’ jvyy tvir gbb znal ivqrbf gb chyy gurz hc. V jnf noyr gb svaq nyy gur ivqrb pyvcf bapr V ynaqrq ba gurfr.
V guvax V zvtug or n yvggyr gbb pyrire sbe zl bja tbbq. Va zl frnepu uvfgbel va gur tnzr, “gjva” vf gur 17gu havdhr frnepu. V tbg gb gur prageny gjvfg irel rneyl ba, naq fb V guvax V fnj n tbbq 70%+ bs gur sbbgntr jvgu vg va zvaq. Vg’f vzcerffvir gung gur tnzr fgvyy jbexrq sbe zr va fcvgr bs vg, ohg V pna’g uryc guvaxvat V zvtug unir rawblrq vg zber vs V qvqa’g pnerra dhvgr fb snfg gbjneqf gung erirny.
Sbe gur erpbeq, gung’f gur yvar bs frnepurf V qvq, zbfgyl ol sbyybjvat guernqf zragvbarq va bar dhrel:
ZHEQRE
sroehnel
gvpxrg
crgre
uryra
fhfna
revp
ina
xrlf
ubzr
nethzrag
svtug – guvf vf jurer V tbg “rir”
rir
zbefr (jung QVQ gur gnc pbqr zrna, naljnl? V’z fbzrubj greevoyr ng vg naq pbhyqa’g svther vg bhg)
unaanu
cbyltencu
yvr qrgrpgbe
gjva
Abg Zbefr pbqr, ohg gur Xabpx pbqr: uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Gnc_pbqr
V nyfb sbhaq bhg nobhg Rir irel rneyl orpnhfr gurer jnf ab JNL V jnf tbvat gb frnepu “zheqre” svefg vs gung jnf jung gur TNZR jnagrq zr gb qb, V’z na vaqvivqhny, V unir guvf gnggbb…
V fgvyy gubhtug gur tnzr jnf cerggl terng.
Ortvaavat bs frnepu uvfgbel:
jrncba
fgbevrf
zveebe
ersyrpgvba
syberapr
rir
Vg gbbx zr gjb ubhef nsgre trggvat “Rir” gb trg jung V’q pnyy gur erny fgbel, fb V qba’g guvax lbh oyrj vg gurer rknpgyl ol pngpuvat vg rneyl.
I feel like the story rather neatly wrapped things up in the end, even if you don’t know every answer to every question, I feel like that was a really precise way to tie up the loose ends introduced in the story and the gur puvg pung orgjrra “zr” naq gur bgure crefba ernyyl oebhtug pybfher sbe zr sebz gur fgbel. V yvxr gung vg yrg zr qrpvqr zl bja nafjre naq gung vg yrg zr svaq gur ynfg srj ivqrbf V’q zvffrq. Ernyyl tbbq vaqvr tnzr. Znlor abg sbe rirelbar ohg VS snaf jbhyq qrsvavgryl rawbl vg n ybg.
V jnf fhecevfrq ubj yvggyr thrffjbex vg npghnyyl gbbx, ohg gur orfg gvc V pna tvir vf gb gel frnepuvat gur ahzoref bar guebhtu ryrira vs lbh’er pbzcyrgryl hggreyl fghpx ba gubfr ynfg srj… naq znlor n xrljbeq lbh zvtug unir zvffrq yvxr “penml” be “svatrecevag”
Talking about ” pieces where the player could make guesses about where things were going and then test them out.” I recommend you this game:
http://gamejolt.com/games/the-night-henry-allen-died/60764
It has no mechanics to evaluate if the player has won or not the game. You just enter, ponder all the information, go out and makes the story in your head.
I loved the anecdote about: trggvat qerffrq.
It reminded me strongly of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3iPrBrGSJM.
Lbhe puvyq unf tbggra qerffrq haernyvfgvpnyyl dhvpxyl. Jung ner lbh tbvat gb guvax? “Gung’f jrveq, V zhfg unir orra envfvat na vqragvpny gjva qnhtugre?” Ab. Lbhe puvyq fbzrubj tbg qerffrq cerggl snfg, naq gung’f vg.
It’s wrong that women have to face these kinds of social issues… I admire that you get out there and do it anyway, Emily.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Her Story – I didn’t find every clip, and my conclusion was that Hannah / Eve were two personalities of the same woman. So it’s interesting reading the other interpretations. Sounds like I need to revisit and find that conclusive clip. I also agree that it has much in common with parser IF – a very innovative take on the genre.
Tim
Meant to post on your reflections thread :) https://emshort.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/her-story-further-reflections/