Her Story (2015)

This is a super-spoilery kind of episode, even more than normal, possibly even moreso than our Spec Ops: The Line cast. Which you should totally check out because it had a social worker dad in it. Ok so yeah, only listen if you're immune to spoilers (there's not much point to playing this game if you know the plot!) or you've played it already. Got it? Her Story is an indie detective 'game' (it's an FMV game fosho) by Sam Barlow, a British fellow, with acting talent of one singular person: a femme fatale rockstar, Viva Seifert, who's damn good. Wiki says it is "about a set of fictional police interviews from 1994", and I see no reason to either disagree or expound upon that considerably other than to say that you play the role of a hip and more-protagonist-y-than-you'd-expect databaser querier who is tasked with querying a database per the direction of you, the player. Search for clips by their audio transcription, 5 at a time, and understand what happened in this woman's life.Her Story draws heavy influences from things like L.A. Noire and Phoenix Wright in some ways, and we liken it to Papers, Please in that it is effectively a game about you doing the mundane to receive story. This is a game that is utterly new and we all appreciate that about it, just like the critics I'm sure you haven't been able to avoid scrounging the floor for something positive that hasn't already been said. This game is emotional and brave, and though it's written by a man, there's some really compelling female narrative here; some of the best I've seen. (Cue angry folks asking why a woman didn't write it - that's discussed in the interview linked below, so don't blame us for not mentioning it.)Relevant links!True Crimes and Family Histories: The Story Behind Her Story via Klepek & Barlow via Giant Bomb (also in Giant Bomb Presents podcast feed)Prisoner's tap code: communicating by tap matrices