Telling Lies

When Sam Barlow released Her Story in 2015, it served as a proof of concept for a forgotten genre. It proved that Full Motion Video (FMV), long relegated to the “cheesy 90s” bargain bin, could be a vehicle for sophisticated, non-linear storytelling. With Telling Lies, Barlow and his team at Half Mermaid have traded the cramped interrogation room for a sprawling NSA database, replacing an unknown protagonist with a cast of heavy hitters including Logan Marshall-Green and Kerry Bishé.

The scope here is significantly broader, yet the core interaction remains simple. The player sits before a simulated laptop, staring at a stolen hard drive containing hundreds of secretly recorded video conversations. These are FaceTime calls, camming sessions, and hidden-camera captures spanning two years of four interconnected lives. The database is searched by typing keywords, but the system—a temperamental bit of software—only serves up the first five results for any given term.

This is where the game moves from being a simple movie to a mechanical detective simulation. By forcing specific words to be found in order to “drill down” into the timeline, Telling Lies weaponizes the act of searching. It positions the player not as a passive observer, but as a digital archeologist digging through the debris of a “catastrophic lie.” It is a massive, expensive, and deeply voyeuristic experiment in how we consume narrative when so much of our lives is recorded, positioning itself more as a prestige television drama you have to work for rather than one you simply watch.

• The Keyword Search Engine: The primary gameplay loop involves typing words into a search bar to retrieve video clips. If a character says “California” in a video, that video appears in the results.
• Asymmetric Conversations: Most clips show only one side of a video call. Context, timing, and environmental clues must be used to deduce who is on the other end and what they are responding to.
• The Five-Result Limit: A crucial design constraint that prevents the whole story from being visible at once. To find later or earlier clips, more specific “niche” words mentioned within the footage must be found.
• Prestige Production Values: Moving beyond indie constraints, the game features high-definition cinematography and a cast of established Hollywood actors, giving the “FMV” label a cinematic standard.

The Search Engine as a Character

The strength of Telling Lies lies in its intentional friction. In most modern games, developers bend over backward to ensure “quality of life”—they want to remove every possible hurdle between the player and the content. Barlow does the opposite. The search tool is clunky, the database is fragmented, and the first-five-results rule is an arbitrary wall. Yet, this wall is what makes it a game.

Because “the” or “and” won’t surface everything, the player is forced to listen—to look for the unique identifiers: a specific brand of beer, a child’s toy, or a niche technical term. When a new clip turns up because a keyword was guessed from a character’s background, the payoff is genuine. It amounts to curating a timeline. This creates a distinct “Aha!” moment when two disparate clips finally click together, revealing a betrayal or a hidden motive uncovered in a specific order.

The Problem with the Scrubbing

However, there is a fine line between “narrative friction” and “mechanical tedium.” The loudest criticism of the design is the lack of a proper scrubbing or “skip to start” feature. Clips in Telling Lies can run for several minutes. If a clip is found because a character says the keyword at the very end, the game drops the viewer at that exact timestamp. To see the beginning of the video, it must be manually rewound.

In Her Story, clips were seconds long, so this wasn’t an issue. Here, holding down a virtual rewind button while a video plays backward at 2x speed feels like a disrespect of the player’s time. Barlow argues this reinforces the “work” of the investigator, but as a design choice it often breaks the narrative flow. A crucial piece of evidence is found, but instead of processing the revelation, the player is stuck holding a button for forty seconds. It’s a rare instance where the skeuomorphism of the laptop interface actively harms the user experience.

A Study in One-Sidedness

The narrative itself is a strong example of writing for the “unseen.” Watching Logan Marshall-Green react to a silent partner on the other end of a call demands a high level of active deduction. The pauses become noticeable. The responses get timed. Eventually, the other side of the call turns up, and the imagined tone turns out to be completely wrong. This is where Telling Lies succeeds most: it highlights the subjectivity of truth. It’s a mature, somber reflection on how much of our lives are lived through lenses and how easily those recordings can be misinterpreted without the full context.

Visually, the game is polished for its genre. The video quality is crisp, the lighting is intentional, and the acting is far above what we typically expect from interactive fiction. Logan Marshall-Green brings a simmering intensity, while Kerry Bishé provides a grounded, tragic counterpoint. The UI—the simulated “Retina” desktop—is convincing, complete with a distracting game of Solitaire and a subtle reflection of the “character” in the screen’s glare. As a design, the simulated OS is built for immersion, though the sheer size of the video files makes for a hefty installation.

• Steam: This is the native home for Telling Lies. Sitting at a physical laptop, using a mouse and keyboard to search a virtual laptop, creates a layer of immersion that is hard to beat. It feels “right.”
• iOS: Surprisingly effective on paper. The “FaceTime” aesthetic of the videos fits the verticality and intimacy of a smartphone or iPad perfectly. It feels like a lost device has actually been found.
• Nintendo Switch: The weakest link. Typing on a console keyboard is a chore, and the “investigator” vibe is somewhat lost when holding a plastic controller on the couch.

Telling Lies is a bold, if occasionally stubborn, evolution of the FMV genre. It demands a level of intellectual investment that few modern titles have the courage to ask for. While the UI choices regarding video navigation are frustratingly archaic, the strength of the writing and the search-driven discovery make it a worthwhile entry in interactive storytelling—for the right audience. It is a game about the labor of truth. We recommend it to patient players, with reservations.