Critical Play 5: Her Story
Her story is an unconventional mystery game that asks players to navigate a 1994 style database to uncover the true story of an unsolved murder. This story is primarily narrative and discovery driven and this narrative is experienced non-linearly by players as they search keywords, watch videos, and take notes on these videos. The game begins quickly by providing very little direction to the player and solely presenting them with the desktop and database to search for video clips in an archive about the case of a murder. “Murder” is the first keyword typed into this database query line, and immediately you begin to click through the interface and watch the scene unfold.
Experiencing this game was unlike any I have played so far. The nonlinearity of watching video clips in a chaotic order by searching with words that jumped out to me in interview clips made me feel like I was actually participating in this investigation, and I also often found myself reflecting on what it means to be an investigator in real life. This definitely strengthened the mystery embedded in the game as I twisted and turned through various key words and short clips to piece together the murder. Additionally this lack of linearity created a sense of disorientation and wonder as I was driven to find my bearings in this database and with the story unfolding.
The sequencing of this game seems like it would have been very difficult to develop, and the narrative loop of this murder feels more like a narrative mess that players must sift through and make sense of in their own way. That being said it works very well for the intention of making players feel like a real life investigator. Every player’s experience with this game is different as they make queries in different orders and follow different narrative threads–I really enjoyed the agency I had in digging through the database following my own curiosities as they arose. The 1990s aesthetic of the UI additionally played into this intentional ‘clunkiness’ as the visuals enforce the disorderliness of the database (as it is quite disorganized and chaotic) as this was the state of the internet and other technology at the time.
My one complaint with this game is that the end state is unclear. It makes sense to unearth the narrative, but I was quite confused about when I was done. Is that for me to decide? Do I need to watch every video? The ‘win state’ as well as some kind of validation for checking if the narrative I was developing in my mind was consistent with the data was completely unknown to me. I would include a progress bar, or more likely new files that populate the desktop to illustrate progress and encourage players that they are on the right track. I did notice that a face reflected in the screen would appear at times of big reveals, but it was unclear what exactly this was communicating.
Overall I loved this game and will definitely be finishing it in the next few days. If you have some time on your hands, definitely check it out!
