Telling Lies is incredibly absorbing, especially if you play at night, in a dimly lit room, with headphones on. It almost felt like a personal betrayal when I learned something about a character that contradicted everything I thought I knew about them, which reflects the experience of some of the characters in the story. Starting the game with literally nothing, and ending it with a complex story mapped out in your head, is an immensely satisfying experience. Especially when you realise that something a character has said about themselves could be (and often is) a lie, encouraging you to find more clips buried in the database to reveal the truth. Discovering these things yourself by paying close attention to the dialogue, and sometimes the environment, is part of what makes Telling Lies such a rewarding detective game. I'm being vague here, but that's because even telling you the characters' names would spoil the experience. Something a character has said about themselves could be (and often is) a lie (Image credit: Future) (opens in new tab)

The game's blend of the blandly domestic and the thrilling is an effective one, setting the everyday lives of the characters against a bubbling plot of conspiracy and duplicity. And you'll search for these things in the database, unravelling yet more intriguing threads, slowly revealing an intricate, labyrinthine story that takes place across two years.

A reference to a mysterious incident, a name, or a place.

But then you'll hear something that piques your curiosity. Like that game, your interpretation of the plot is determined by which clips you discover and the order you view them in.Īs you search the database you'll see clips of a father reading his daughter a bedtime story, a couple watching a movie together, and other snippets of people just living their lives. Separating fact from fiction is at the heart of this new 'desktop adventure' from the creator of narrative experiment Her Story. Because some of these people are, as the title suggests, liars. But by the end you'll know them intimately, and will have uncovered a series of shocking truths about their lives.

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