Her Story

Her Story is one of the most distinctive adventure games of its time – instead of a classic dialogue tree or moving through locations, the player searches a large archive of short video clips from police interviews, with the only tool being a search field. By entering keywords, the player gradually uncovers fragments of testimony from a woman suspected in her husband's disappearance and pieces together for themselves what actually happened – the game never offers a linear sequence of events, only fragments from which the player must assemble the story themselves, with the order in which clips are discovered differing from playthrough to playthrough.

On a touchscreen the controls work surprisingly naturally – typing keywords on the virtual keyboard and tapping search results mirrors the experience of the computer version without any change to how the game is approached. Author Sam Barlow proved with this format that an adventure game doesn't have to rest on an inventory and item puzzles, but can work purely as a detective puzzle about human memory and language. The acting performance in the recorded footage carries the entire atmosphere of the game and gives it an unusual rawness for a mobile title.

It's a one-time paid game with no ads or microtransactions, completable in one to two longer sessions. After release it received exceptionally positive critical acclaim and became a frequently cited example of how well a purely narrative experience can work on mobile.

Why play it: For players looking for a thoughtful detective story without action and without free-to-play elements – all it takes is patience and a willingness to piece the fragments together yourself.