Her Story

Her Story is a 2015 video game created by Sam Barlow, whose earlier work included writing and design on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Aisle. It presents itself as an investigation into archived police interviews recorded in 1994, rather than as a conventional game with movement, combat, or inventory. The player sits at a fictional computer and searches a database of full motion video clips. Each result contains one short segment from an interview with a woman identified as Hannah Smith, played by British musician and actress Viva Seifert. Search terms come from the interview transcripts, but only selected words are initially revealed, encouraging the player to infer vocabulary and connect apparently separate statements. The interface deliberately resembles an old desktop system, making the act of searching itself the central mechanic. There is no explicit quest marker, prescribed sequence, or conventional ending that explains every discovery for the player. Instead, understanding develops through comparison, repetition, and contradiction. The interviews concern the disappearance and death of Simon Smith, Hannah's husband. Hannah describes their relationship, Simon's behavior, and events around his vanishing, while other clips gradually undermine or complicate what she says. The central revelation is that Hannah is not a single straightforward identity: the evidence points toward twin sisters, Hannah and Eve, who have presented themselves through the same interview process. Their differing personalities, memories, and responses turn the database into a puzzle about identity, performance, and unreliable testimony. The game never reduces its mystery to a simple detective solution; the player must decide how to interpret the sisters' accounts and the circumstances surrounding Simon's death, leaving much of its interpretation to the player alone. Released in June 2015 for Windows, macOS, and iOS, the game later appeared on Android. Barlow made it independently after his work at Climax Studios, where he wrote and designed several Silent Hill titles. Seifert provides the game's only visible performance, and production relies on filmed interview fragments rather than animated characters or conventional cutscenes. The searchable video made Her Story notable because players control the order and context in which crucial information appears. Her Story won the 2016 Game Developers Choice Award for Best Narrative and the Independent Games Festival Excellence in Narrative award. It also received a BAFTA Games Award for Game Innovation, a recognition of its unusual searchable archive, where uncertainty becomes central to player interaction itself.