Sam Barlow, once lead designer on the Silent Hill series, has now made his name exploring the lines between film and gaming with 2015’s Her Story. While we’re still waiting for that games’ spiritual sequel, Telling Lies, he’s just announced the release date for #WarGames, an interactive six-part programme where the viewer controls the video feeds, which will, apparently, influence your experience of the series as it goes on. Read the rest of this entry »
I make references to old movies, because I am an old man who only thinks about the past. In this case, the reference is to 80s ‘teen hacker almost accidentally nukes the world’ thriller Wargames. Y’know, the one that no-one remembers anything about other than “shall we play a game?” But don’t we all feel like best friends when we quote it together?
We already knew that Sam Barlow, the fella behind FMV detective game Her Story, was working on an interactivery movie sorta thing using the license, but now we get the teaser trailer, and a sense of how cold war nuclear terror has been updated for a new age of electronic disquiet. The fact that this is called #Wargames, rather than simply Wargames, probably provides some clues to this.
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Oh no, is that headline libellous? Let me check my big copy of McNae’s. Actually, no, let’s live dangerously. Sam Barlow, the creator of crime thriller Her Story is caught up in Telling Lies! By that I mean he is making a new interactive video story called Telling Lies, and teaming up with a big ol’ film production company to do so. We don’t know exactly what it’s about yet but Barlow did tell Variety that it was something of a “political thriller with 3-4 key characters” and a “spiritual follow-up” to Her Story rather than a straight-up sequel.
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“Hello,” said Graham, strolling into the RPS Treehouse. “Here’s a link to a seven-thousand word article which was interesting and has information about Her Story creator Sam Barlow’s interactive film project. BYE!” And off he went, out of the window, diving into a leaf pile and disturbing the local hedgehogs. It was a New Yorker piece by Raffi Khatchadourian about interactive films and is a truly fascinating read if you have a few minutes free. I’ll excerpt some of the bits about Barlow’s project, #WarGames [official site], below, but there’s a lot about scripting these kinds of narratives in the rest of the article which felt really valuable to think about. Read the rest of this entry »
With Her Story [official site] sweeping up 3 awards at GDC, more than any other game, you may be wondering what Sam Barlow is going to do next. (You could almost say: what his story is going to be.)
He teased Her Story 2 in the past, in a wonderfully tantalizing tweet, but he has also decided to join Interlude as Executive Creative Director. If you have never heard of them, that’s alright, most of us hadn’t. To put it simply, Interlude make interactive videos, which at the end of the day are not that different from FMV games.
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.
Most of Team RPS spent the end of June hunched over screens, looking confused and tapping away at their keyboards hoping that eventually something would make sense.
Wait for it.
And in the game.
Thank you, thank you.
FMV crime mystery Her Story [official site], which has players watching old police interview footage and trying to figure out what happened, ended up one of our favourite games of 2015. Good stuff! And good news: creator Sam Barlow has teased the follow-up he’s working on.
RPS Feature 2015's best FMV game.
What is the best FMV game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today’s door is…
RPS Feature Perfect Crime
Videogames spilling out of closets. Videogames stuffed under your bed. Videogames in your hair, and in your eyes, nose and mouth. Shrunken videogames clogging your pores, marching through your arteries. Videogames like rocks in your stomach.
Oh, hello. Are you suffering from too many videogames? That’s why doctors* created Game of the Month. Take just one videogame monthly and you can fight the ill effects of having too much to play, not having enough time to play, or not knowing what to play. Game of the Month for July? It’s Her Story [official site].
RPS Feature Our Stories
Now that Her Story [official site] is available, Adam, John and Pip have gathered to discuss the structure and plot of the extraordinary FMV crime game. There are spoilers throughout and as much of the game revolves around the secrets and lies surrounding a criminal case, please don’t read on if you haven’t already played. Our spoiler-free review and interview should help you to decide if you do want to play.
RPS Feature Just one more thing
A camera records the statements that a woman makes to the police in relation to her missing husband. Years later, you sit at a computer and search through a video database by typing in keywords. The computer searches for the keywords in transcripts of the statements and returns up to five results. To dig deeper, you’ll have to make connections, combine words, play detective.
Her Story [official site] is a game about crime and investigation from Aisle and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories designer Sam Barlow, and it’s one of the best in its field.
Sam Barlow continues to stake his claim on the coveted title Basically Gaming’s Soderbergh as he meanders between mainstream and indie culture. He’s gone from writing a XYZZY Award winning interactive fiction game called Aisle in the late ’90s to Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, AKA that Wii game wot was quite good, and is now a few weeks away from releasing one of the most interesting looking narrative experiments I’ve seen in some time: Her Story [official site].
RPS Feature Serial, True Detective And Alan Bennett
Sam Barlow has one of the most impressive CVs in gaming. By my reckoning, he only has six releases to his name but two of those games are comfortably inside my list of all-time favourites – the experimental interactive fiction of Aisle and the masterful Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The latter might never come to PC but hopefully it’ll arrive in digital download form on the Wii U’s eShop sooner rather than later.
Barlow’s next game, Her Story, has elements of true crime, police procedural and confessional monologue. During a sprawling conversation last week, we discussed how it continues to play with interactive storytelling techniques, and how it has as much in common with Alan Bennett as True Detective.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Aisle is one of my favourite games. It’s a snapshot of a life in progress that unfolds into a complex character study that you can guide toward tragedy, farce, drama, thriller or romance. The confines within which it operates – a text adventure in which a single action can be taken on each playthrough – are as strict as any I can think of, but from the restrictions of that stage it gestures toward distant cities and a storehouse of memories. You should take some time to play it right now.
