Sam Barlow built Her Story out of a mothballed desktop and 271 video clips. Released on 24 June 2015 for iOS, OS X and Windows, with Android the following year, it hands the player a police database and no instructions worth the name. You type words. You watch a British woman answer questions you never hear.
The L.O.G.I.C. Database
The interviews are seven, all from 1994, all concerning a missing husband later found murdered. The woman calls herself Hannah Smith. She is played by Viva Seifert, the musician and one half of Joe Gideon and the Shark.
You cannot watch a full interview. The database only returns fragments, so context has to be rebuilt from the order you find things in. Hannah’s answers are transcribed, and the transcriptions are the search index. Type a word, get the clips where she says it.
A Desktop Thriller
Barlow called the game a “desktop thriller”. He has said the interface was “part Apple II, part Windows 3.1 and part Windows 98”, and he compared the searching to Google, wanting the player to be “essentially Googling”.
The conceit of making the computer itself a prop in the game was so neat
That line explains the whole design. The machine is not a menu. It is the room you are standing in.
Two Women, One Name
The case turns on identity. Hannah, it emerges, is two people: Hannah and Eve, identical twins separated at birth by the midwife Florence, who faked Eve’s death to keep her. They later lived as one person, sharing a diary and a set of rules. Hannah married Simon, miscarried in her eighth month, and grew possessive. Eve met Simon again in a bar where she sang, and they began an affair.
Seifert carries all of it. The performance is the reason the fragments cohere.
Mirror Game and the Slow Opening
Barlow made the opening screen “slightly too long” on purpose, a signal about pacing. The desktop also hides Mirror Game, a Reversi variant, and a checker that turns red boxes green as you view clips. His research came from real police interviews, where he found recurring themes in suspects’ answers and decided to build in ambiguity. He has cited Homicide: Life on the Street as inspiration, and called the Ace Attorney series “rigid”.
What Holds and What Slips
The searching is the whole game, and it is a genuine mechanic rather than a wrapper. Where Her Story stumbles is repetition: the same clips surface under different terms, and late-game progress depends on guessing the right noun. The narrative is the stronger half, and it is strong enough to carry the weaker one.
Her Story sold over 100,000 copies and drew year-end nominations, including Game of the Year nods. Telling Lies followed in August 2019. The sequel did not need to exist; this one did.
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