Telling Lies

Four private lives. One big lie. Search through secretly recorded video conversations to discover the truth. The successor to the acclaimed Her Story.

Telling Lies is a mystery, fmv and thriller game developed by Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid and Furious Bee Limited and published by Annapurna Interactive.
Released on August 23rd 2019 is available on Windows and MacOS in 12 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Spanish - Latin America, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

It has received 1,192 reviews of which 769 were positive and 423 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.3 out of 10. 😐

The game is currently priced at 4.62€ on Steam and has a 75% discount.

The Steam community has classified Telling Lies into these genres:

Mystery FMV Thriller Detective Story Rich Adventure Indie Realistic Investigation Crime Simulation Interactive Fiction Exploration Point & Click Puzzle Open World Nonlinear Singleplayer Drama Atmospheric

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at Telling Lies through various videos and screenshots.

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Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

OS: Windows 10
Processor: 2.0 GHz Dual Core Processor
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 8800 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 4 GB available space

MacOS

OS: OS X Yosemite
Processor: 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Storage: 4 GB available space

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Dec. 2024

Okay so, the game did leave me a bit confused on what exactly was happening fully, but I got the gist of it. I think it's worth playing when you're bored with time and patience to watch videos. You can eat or snack while playing lol. It's definitely left me not wanting to play it again because I don't think there is any replay value. Getting it for cheap, like a few bucks isn't bad.

Nov. 2024

It’s easy to guess why Telling Lies gets such lukewarm reviews compared to the other FMV titles by the same developer. It certainly doesn’t make a very good first impression, with multiple core mechanics such as one-sided videos or slooow rewinding that make it seem like this game is not planning to respect your time. However, I’d wholeheartedly recommend giving it your full attention anyway, because what can be found on the other end is a unique, thought-provoking, emotionally charged and beautifully planned story. The setup is very similar to Her Story, with the playable character showing off her google-fu by interrogating a database of recorded conversations, except this time the character has a face, and a partial reflection of that face will sometimes be visible on the screen, reminding that you’re "watching the watcher". Most clips display only one side of a video call while the other side is muted, so if you want a full conversation, you’ll have to find both parts of a pair and watch them back-to-back. This pads the game to effectively twice of its "real" length, with a lot of downtime where characters just nod or change expressions based on what’s happening on the other end, but also creates a raw, immersive feel of peeking into people’s most personal and private moments. As you can see, there’s obviously some commentary on mass surveillance here. There’s also commentary on FBI controversies, corporate greed, voyeurism, abusive relationships, double lives, naive dreams and a desperate longing for "realness". Unlike Her Story, which was strictly about one woman telling a story, this is a very ambitious, expansive narrative with multiple plotlines that may look independent at first. In the end, though, everything is tied together wonderfully, revealing one man’s tragic tale that leaves no questions unanswered yet also lets you draw your own conclusions about who were really in the wrong. It's hard to overstate how well planned this story is, not just in a pure narrative way but also in terms of being tailored to such an atypical, fragmented presentation. There may be a bit of fat here and there (mostly due to some overly long videos), but 90% of the clips say something relevant, regardless of the order you watch them. Even if you stumble upon the critical scenes and see what happened early on, you still won’t know why exactly it happened, and discovering the "whys" here is just as rewarding, since the characters’ motivations matter as much as their actions. What’s more, spoken lines are also carefully tailored to the gameplay of search queries, saying keywords only when they want you to find them while talking indirectly when they don’t. When I was playing Her Story, meaningful queries gave way to randomly trying common words relatively quickly, but here it didn’t happen until much later (though it still did happen, eventually, but that’s probably unavoidable for such a mechanic). The one-sided nature of most videos improves the process too, giving you an immediate goal of finding a pair and aligning them in your head instead of just watching clip after clip after clip. Having said all that, this game is certainly not as laser-focused as its predecessor, featuring a decent number of flavor videos where the characters just fool around or chat about daily life, and it’s not as engaging as watching a traditional, precisely edited movie or TV series, so some patience is required. Then again, it’s clear that Sam Barlow is a very competent and knowledgeable writer who can saturate even trite dialogues with interesting trivia, whether it’s fairytales, rock music, action movies or American geography. For increased effect, I recommend playing this when it’s dark outside in 30-60 min sessions, fully getting into the mood of late-night video calls with strangers. At times it might certainly feel boring and uneventful, just like watching other people’s lives, but at other times it will be unexpectedly meaningful and poignant, just like watching other people’s lives. And while the endings are jarring enough to severely sour the final impression if taken at face value, I’m inclined to trust in the author’s capacity for more subtle storytelling and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/762830/discussions/2/4635988522932749509]view them through the lens of the game’s title instead. Because indeed, the most dangerous thing isn’t even lying to others. The most dangerous thing is lying to yourself.

Aug. 2024

9/10 Telling Lies is not a detective game about a special event. It is a story that focus on life of four persons that somehow connected to each other. Even though the only way that we know about these persons are through some recorded video calls, but eventually all of these four characters are become important to us, because of their brilliant casting. So these acting beside the great direction, are the reasons that made Telling Lies a great interactive game. +: Brilliant acting of every character Great direction Interesting story All the endings are very good Good gameplay and user interface -: The user interface has many flaws that make the gameplay tedious

Aug. 2024

Another interesting story with some twists, but I personally enjoyed Her Story more. Something many others have mentioned that I agree with is that the rewind is very slow. There is a mod someone made to quicken the rewind speed, but it would be nice if the rewind speed was quicker by default. If you don't mind the rewind speed and think the story sounds intriguing, I'd say pick it up. As of my writing of this review, the game is currently on sale for 5 USD (75% off), which I think is justified.

May 2024

Really captures the feelings from the game that started it all: "Her Story". I took lots of notes to try and unravel the mystery of what had happened and had a lot of fun doing that. However, the controls aren't perfect and can be very tedious especially when you can't seek to exactly where you want quickly nor jump to the start of the video (which is very sorely needed and reasonable in my opinion). Overall still quite enjoyable.

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Data sources

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Last Updates

Steam data	20 November 2024 08:10
SteamSpy data	17 December 2024 10:56
Steam price	23 December 2024 12:42
Steam reviews	22 December 2024 13:54

-75% 18.49€ 4.62€

6.3

769

423

Online players

Developer

Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid, Furious Bee Limited

Publisher

Annapurna Interactive

Release 23 Aug 2019

Platforms