I’m actually mostly playing Kerbal Space Program at the moment but that’s such a complex and time consuming game that I felt like mixing it up with something lighter. I got this as part of the Humble Narrative bundle recently, though I only very rarely buy those. This game got some good mentions on Broken Forum when it came out and I know that it’s very short so it seems like a great fit.

This game puts you at the desktop of a police computer to review recorded footage of a woman Hannah Smith. The time stamp on the recordings reveal that these all date from 1994 and that impression is reinforced by the graininess of the videos and the obsolete software of the computer. You get access to the videos only by typing in keywords and a conceit of the game is that however many videos match your search term, you only get access to the first five hits, so the game-like part is trying to narrow down the search terms. The videos come from a number of different recording sessions which you can clearly tell apart from the different dates but due to the haphazard manner that you get access to them, you won’t be able to view them in order.

The story that emerges that the interviewee, Hannah Smith, has reported the disappearance of her husband Simon. The couple had had an argument and Simon had gone to the local pub. Hannah had driven off in her car to work out her anger as well and only returned the following morning to find that Simon was still gone. She eventually goes to the police to report the disappearance which of course prompts the investigation. Hannah quickly becomes the prime suspect of a probable murder case and as you might expect the story soon takes a darker and more mysterious twist as the interview topics touch on how the couple first met, how that they had a shotgun marriage due to her pregnancy but then she subsequently miscarried and so on.

The format is well done and works better than I expected. The frisson of thrill as you delve deeper into the mystery is palpable. The game cheats by playing dramatic music and darkening the screen when you stumble on especially revelatory videos but I’m okay with that. It’s a novel and effective way to tell a story. I did feel somewhat torn between trying to role-play properly and trying to game the system to get access to as many videos as possible. At first I made proper notes of key names and places on a piece of paper but I eventually realized that most of these were red herrings and gave up. Some of the most important key words turn out to be fairly generic ones, like ‘marriage’, ‘baby’ and so on. You can even blindly type in words like ‘Friday’ and get interesting videos.

STORY SPOILERS AFTER THIS, BE WARNED

As much as I enjoyed working out the mystery in my head and understanding how all this ties together, I have a hard time buying the central twist that the twins discovered each other as little girls and decided to share a single life then and there and kept it up for almost all of their adult life. The twist isn’t that hard to grasp for anyone who has watched Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige but the girls here seem to lack any kind of motivation for the charade except it seemed fun and cool. It’s kind of ridiculous also that the little girls had the resources to do all this and keep it a secret from their parents.

I also have problems working out exactly at which point Eve comes out to the police that she and Hannah are two different people and why she does that. There just doesn’t seem to be a video about this specific confession. I think that there’s one specific point that is ambiguous: what does Eve mean when she says that Hannah is gone for good? It could mean that Eve killed Hannah or that Hannah has successfully fled. Either way works. Apart from that I don’t think there are any real ambiguities in the rest of the story and it’s pretty easy to understand what must have happened.

Overall this was an interesting and enjoyable experience while it lasted with some genuine emotional highlights. I’m not sure how well this will work a second time around but I will note that the format will probably be better if there were more characters played by multiple performers. It would be cool to actually have to work out who is lying and when someone is contradicting himself. I expected to have to do this here but it wasn’t necessary and subsequent videos easily reveal exactly when the interviewee was hiding the truth. The whole thing takes only about a couple of hours to play, less if you’re not intent on ferreting out every possible video so think of this as a very novel form of movie.