Introduction

Telling Lies is the grown-up, noir cousin of 'click-through-a-mystery' games who shows up to family gatherings wearing sunglasses indoors and a blazer that says "I Know Things." Made by Sam Barlow and Furious Bee and shepherded to market by Annapurna Interactive, this is a full‑motion video (FMV) detective romp where you, the nosy keyboard-sleuth, are handed a stolen NSA hard drive full of video calls and told: "Figure it out." On PS4 the interface has been adapted from its original desktop-first conception to a controller-friendly living-room experience, but the core conceit survives intact - this is a game built from actors, conversations, and the delicious feeling of eavesdropping with permission.

Gameplay

The game wears the modest hat of "desktop thriller," which is just a fancy way of saying you play on a simulated computer screen and get to be the worst kind of internet archeologist. The hard drive contains hundreds of short video clips filmed over a two-year span, recorded mostly as one-sided video calls between four central people (played with impressively natural chemistry by Logan Marshall-Green, Alexandra Shipp, Kerry Bishé and Angela Sarafyan) and a handful of others. Your primary tools are a search box, a timeline of clips, the ability to scrub forwards and backwards in each clip, highlight words from subtitles to search further, and a memo pad for your messy detective doodles. Gameplay is delightfully simple to describe and fiendishly addictive to execute: you type keywords, watch snippets, and chase breadcrumbs. Each highlighted word is a new map pin in the sprawling terrain of the narrative; often a throwaway phrase in one clip will open a rabbit hole into someone's shame, a lie, or a plot twist that makes your brain audibly click into place. The clips deliberately give you only one side of conversations, which turns matching up context from different clips into a satisfying game of auditory jigsaw. You have a limited amount of time per playthrough - a clever bit of game design that keeps sessions focused and gives the whole experience a pressure-cooker feel - and if you want to keep digging you'll have to restart from scratch, losing your notes. It sounds mean, but it's a good kind of mean. The narrative itself is less single-murder-whodunit and more a braided political-thriller-meets-personal-disaster: David Smith (Logan Marshall-Green), an undercover FBI agent, infiltrates an environmental activist orbit and falls into complications that involve romance, betrayal, a shadowy group called Black Kite, and a webcam performer who may or may not be someone you can trust. Depending on which characters' footage you linger on, you can end the story in one of three different mid-credit reveals - not exactly "choose your own adventure," but close enough that you feel culpable for the life outcomes of these people. The game reportedly contains roughly ten hours of edited content culled from over a hundred hours shot, which explains why everything you watch feels crisp and meaningful. There are tiny diversions tucked in, like a version of solitaire in the in-game desktop (which, in true cosmic humor, is missing the king of clubs so it's unwinnable). It's a cheeky reminder that the game doesn't want you to be too comfortable. The interface can be slightly unintuitive at first - critics have grumbled about the learning curve for jumping between clips and managing searches - but once you get the rhythm, the act of building a timeline and filling in the gaps becomes a strangely calming compulsion. The highlight feature of Telling Lies is how exploration feels organic: you follow curiosity rather than being prodded by objectives, and that makes discoveries land harder and feel more personal.

Graphics

If you were expecting shiny polygon castles and texture pop-in, you will be disappointed - and if you've got an appreciation for acting and subtle cinematography, you'll be thrilled. The "graphics" are real people recorded on camera: close-ups, domestic interiors, car interiors, boats, hospital rooms - all of it staged to look like authentic video calls. The production design leans into realism: the actors were mostly filmed in separate locations and recorded over video conferencing setups to capture that slightly grainy, on-the-nose intimacy of modern digital communication. It pays off. Facial ticks, microexpressions, and the occasional awkward frame all add character and authenticity; it's voyeurism with a film-school pedigree. The virtual desktop UI is pleasant and clean on PS4. The simulated monitor even shows a faint reflection of the in-game player-character - a neat touch that makes you feel all the more like you're peeking at something forbidden. Lighting and camera choices are intentionally unflashy; they're built to sell the conversations, not the spectacle. When drama occurs, the tension is carried by performance and edit more than by flashy visual effects, which is exactly what this kind of game needs. Occasional clipping or compression artifacts are part of the medium rather than a flaw, and the result is an aesthetic that sits somewhere between an indie film and a well-produced documentary confession series.

Conclusion

Telling Lies is the sort of game that sneaks up on you. It's not about twitch reactions or fancy combos; it's about the patient, slightly creepy pleasure of assembling a human story from fragments. Sam Barlow's evolution from Her Story to this more ambitious, morally complicated piece is largely successful: the acting is uniformly strong, the writing smart and sometimes harrowing, and the freedom to roam the archive makes every decision - and every keyword search - feel weighty. The unwinnable solitaire and the limited playthrough timer are reminders that the game wants to keep you honest: you can't consume everything at once, and you shouldn't expect the game to hold your hand. The interface can feel fiddly until it clicks, and some players may crave a bit more mechanical payoff or agency than Telling Lies offers. If you want blockbuster spectacle, look elsewhere. If you enjoy being a slightly judgmental, nosy detective from your couch and like your mysteries served as vignettes of real human messiness, this is well worth the watch. On PS4 it's a polished, oddly intimate thriller - one that earns a solid 8/10 for being brave, engrossing, and gloriously voyeuristic.

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