Have You Played... Her Story?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I am late to the Her Story party, because I was determined that I was going to play it with my partner. That's what I did two weekends ago, and it was as good as I'd hoped.

Her Story is a murder mystery where your investigation is directed via a search box. You've been given access to an old police computer system containing clips of a suspect's interrogation, and must search for keywords to puzzle out whodunit. It's a clever mesh of mechanic and interface, underpinned by a script that does the impressive work of leading you along a story even when you technically have total freedom to skip ahead.

It's also a great party game, in its way. I sat at the keyboard while my partner and I both watched the clips and came up with theories and discussed what to search for next. It made the revelations - some of which we worked out early, some of which are soap operatic - more fulfilling for being shared.

A sidenote: I say that I sat at the keyboard, but that keyboard was a virtual one, triggered via the Steam Controller as we played the game via Steam Link. It almost worked.