TELLING LIES

Developer Furious Bee Limited Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format iOS, PC

Sam Barlow’s follow-up to Her Story would be easy to write off as more of the same. It is, in fairness, another FMV drama where you sift through a library of video clips. Except here it’s her story, her story, her story and his story: an altogether knottier tale of four strangers, bound by… well, that would be telling.

As setups go, it’s undeniably less hooky than its predecessor. At first, it’s unclear what kind of story this is – or, for that matter, whose tale to follow first. Yet if Telling Lies is trickier to get a handle on, you’ll soon hit upon a search term that gives you the first breadcrumb of a tantalising trail. And, as you follow that one, you’ll find more leading off in other directions.

Before long, you’ll feel like a feverish conspiracy theorist, red threads criss-crossing one another on your mental corkboard – an in-game notepad lets you keep track of your thoughts, but we soon resort to making notes on pen and paper. Pages of words in all caps, sometimes underlined, sometimes furiously scribbled out, are a testament to how deeply Barlow’s mystery sinks its claws.

In inviting us to get more intimately acquainted with its characters, it can sometimes feel a little too intimate. Watching their private Skype chats makes you more voyeur than detective – though any discomfort is, of course, wholly intentional. And its cast refuse to wilt in the unforgiving glare of its close-up camera; no slight on Viva Seifert, who did some fine work in Her Story, but a bigger budget has afforded Barlow the talent to do his artfully tangled script justice. Credit, then, to Logan Marshall-Green, Angela Sarafyan, Kerry Bishé and Alexandra Shipp for giving us four relatably flawed, authentically human characters in a game where even the lies ring true.