FMV Saga Her Story Has Sold A Whopping 100,000 Copies

Sam Barlow's full-motion video detective simulator Her Story has sold over 100,000 copies since its June 24 debut on PC, Mac, and iOS. 

Barlow revealed the news via Twitter, obviously very excited to see that his hard work had wrought such a great bounty:

Barlow is the creator of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, one of the most divisive entries in the Silent Hill saga. Her Story would be divisive in a perfect world that didn't automatically label different approaches to gaming as "unique," though it's received a rash of perfect and high scores around the internet since its debut. 

But it isn't a game so much as a wealth of clips that you can view by typing in keywords surrounding (what you think is) the disappearance of a woman's husband. You can only view five clips at a time depending on what keyword you type in, so you've got to start narrowing things down. For instance, you can type in "murder" and see if that's a possibility, and relevant clips will be displayed in turn. 

Sometimes the keyword tagging system isn't very reliable, however, and despite having typed in keywords before that didn't turn up evidence, you'll uncover videos later on that feature said word. It's unclear if this is shoddy game design or purposeful, but it certainly put a kibosh on my investigation when I was attempting my very own notation system. 

And it didn't feel very much like a game after I spent hours watching video clips, some as short as two and three seconds, to figure out a "darker" and much more convoluted narrative than what I was lead to believe was the main thread in the first place. Even more of the gamification of playing as a detective was stripped away when I realized I could simply type in "blank" (the tag each clip featured in its tagging system) and the system would display all of the video clips in chronological order, the way they were meant to be viewed. I realized this was even less of a game than I thought at first, and while the story was gripping, it just didn't seem worth the few hours I had put into attempting to decipher it anymore after downloading and playing on Steam. 

So while it's an interesting concept, I hesitate to really call it a game or perfect in any way. It's captivating, and it's high entertainment, at least for the first hour or so or until you figure out what's actually happening. Perhaps a sequel could add extra features or something of value to extend the experience, because it's certainly on the right track, even though it faltered.