Open Up For Me Max: The Magic of the FMV Video Game

So now people are talking about Her Story, a lot of them are calling it an FMV game. I don’t think I originally thought of Her Story as an FMV game — but I’ve since picked up the habit and have called it that myself a few times now. For the young, or uninitiated, the […]

A Magical Incantation: Playing Games with Words

There are a multitude of ways to control a video game. All valid, all with their own nuances. But the one I’m currently mainlining is text. Text stands alone as control schemes go, it works on an entirely different level. In the main, the currently popular control schemes are mechanical devices that allow you to […]

How The Architecture of Pan laid the foundations for Her Story

Before HER STORY there was The Architecture of Pan. This was an indie game idea I was kicking about for a bit. An exploratory horror game set in an architect’s 3D visualisation of a non-Euclidean apartment. The apartment was a room-shaped nautilus shell, a digital hidey hole for a hibernating Vampire who was waiting out […]

Please, Games: Throw Out Everything But The Kitchen Sink

Working on publisher-funded console titles there was one observation I was a little tired of hearing. When pitching an idea, you might be told: “That just sounds too… kitchen sink?” Unless you’re going to use it to bludgeon someone to death, or as a plumbing mini-game, that kitchen sink is a kiss of death. The […]

Break My Game

Stories in games are commonly fragile things. The more authored and scripted, the less systemic, the more easily they break. Whereas a movie or a book can only be truly broken by physically attacking the hardware or its audience, games break mostly just through being played. Specifically I’m thinking about breaking the way the game’s […]

Telling a Digital Story with J.G. Ballard

Here’s a rambling post, trying to lay out my thoughts on some aspects of HER STORY that are important to me. It started out as a few thoughts on Gone Home, got distracted by J. G. Ballard and now is almost entirely about J. G. Ballard and has no Gone Home stuff in it at […]

Detective Stories

Without even trying, detective stories naturally end up as borderline experimental fiction. They’re the stories most concerned with the act of story-telling itself. I imagine this is why most decent writers love a good detective story. What’s so interesting about them? I love that: They’re non-linear. They start with a dead body (middle) and then jump […]

Inspiration and Flavour

I loved it when SIMOGO shared a moodboard at the start of their DEVICE 6 development, so I thought I’d do the same. Here’s a quick grab of some of the stuff that is in bubbling away in the early stages of HER STORY as inspiration and general flavour. (Yes, One of the pics is of DEVICE […]

Design Pillars

It’s important that a game has a strong set of core pillars that underpin its design. These are some of the first notes I made about HER STORY and give a good idea of where we’re headed– I often work best when the seed of an idea is structural and/or limiting. Once the constraints are […]

Introducing HER STORY

HER STORY is a crime fiction game with a female main character. It is being created by Sam Barlow, writer and designer of SILENT HILL SHATTERED MEMORIES and AISLE. Read early details about HER STORY in this exclusive Edge interview. Keep an eye on the development blog at HerStoryGame.com for insight into the ideas and process behind the game!