Telling Lies

Telling Lies is a desktop thriller that takes a bit too much to be in gear and suffers from avoidable technical intricacy, but if taken with the right amount of patience,it gifts us with a story of love and violence, fear and lies, with credible and admirably interpreted characters.

As a successor of Her Story, Telling Lies succeeds in delivering a deep and varied story with what is essentially the same system. However, whether that story is full of surprises or not, depends hugely on the player’s reasoning powers.

In sum, Telling Lies represents a niche genre that explores interactive storytelling in a very unique way. The game’s director, Sam Barlow, evolved the Her Story formula, but at a cost. After all, what makes the game so good also reveals its flaws. The ending, for example, can feel very anticlimactic depending on how you uncover specific videos. Still, as the saying goes, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” And Telling Lies is quite a journey — hopefully, one that will inspire many more story-driven games to come. Now go, awaken the sleuth inside you.