Her Story

Her Story hides its plot in clips you find by searching words. The plot is spread across almost 300 clips that you unearth by searching for words, which makes you part detective, part archeologist. The archive stops you watching clips in order, so you search words mentioned in clips or guess words spoken elsewhere.

Mark Brown lists it among games that hide answers in a clunky archive, so the dead ends and red herrings conceal the real answer without much authoring. He says: "You need all the dead ends and red herrings to, essentially, hide the real answer."

Her Story hides its plot in clips you find by searching words. The plot is spread across almost 300 clips that you unearth by searching for words, which makes you part detective, part archeologist. The archive stops you watching clips in order, so you search words mentioned in clips or guess words spoken elsewhere.

Mark Brown lists it among games that hide answers in a clunky archive, so the dead ends and red herrings conceal the real answer without much authoring. He says: "You need all the dead ends and red herrings to, essentially, hide the real answer."

Her Story lets players tag footage to track their own investigation. Players can tag clips as they search. Brown cites this as an example of note-taking tools that make investigation games easier to follow.

He groups it with Shadows of Doubt's pinboard and Hypnospace Outlaw's bookmarks, and says such tools make investigations "10 times more fun" in the case of the pinboard.

Her Story's open-ended search leaves some players unsure when they are done. A Steam forum user wrote that in Her Story it is up to you to decide when you are satisfied with the information found, and asked how to decide.

Brown uses this to argue that some players are lost without direction and that games should still offer goals for them, to give structure and progression.