Telling Lies on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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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 1,231 reviews of which 786 were positive and 445 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.2 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 18.49€ on Steam, but you can find it for 3.82€ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Telling Lies into these genres:
System 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
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Bottom line up front: The UI/navigation in this game can sour it for many people; it didn't for me. If you like other Sam Barlow/Half Mermaid games then give this a try (you can always refund it w/in Steam's restrictions). I let the negative reviews on account of the UI/navigation steer me away from this for a long time and I now regret that. It is phenomenal. The review proper: 'Telling Lies' adopts a very similar gameplay experience as its predecessor, 'Her Story': type a word or phrase into a database search box, watch a clip, use info in that clip to inform future search queries, and unravel a mystery all while doing so. (If you have not played 'Her Story,' I strongly recommend doing so before purchasing this game; it is slightly simpler but will act as a good litmus test for whether 'Telling Lies' will jive with you.) The story is much stronger in 'Telling Lies,' if only because you engage with a greater number of characters (roughly four main ones). By the time one reaches the end of the game (having watched such-and-such many videos, including certain key ones) they are suffused with the narrative's themes, subtext, and irony. It is a slow burn, but one well worth enduring. Fortunately, Water is Life. The black eye on this game, as most negative reviews single out, involves how one navigates the videos. Unlike 'Her Story,' most of 'Telling Lies' 's videos come from two-way FaceTime-style calls. That means some videos will have minutes-long breaks of silence from one party, indicating its complementary video to involve someone else talking for that time. The game allows for fast-forwarding and rewinding, but the maximum speed at which one can do so can still be painfully slow in many cases. When choosing a video to play it will start at the time during which the relevant word the player searched is tokened by its speaker. In a 9-minute video whose search term appears at the end, rewinding to the beginning at max speed can take minutes. Even if patience is a virtue, in gaming and in life, no virtuous person enjoys spending minutes at a time rewinding a video. Some have suggested that it would have been useful to have a synchronization function that, once one has identified a correct video-pair, they can synchronize them in order to watch both simultaneously and experience the conversation in real-time, rather than trying to piece it together by going back and forth between the clips. I can't say I disagree, but I wouldn't say this would necessarily make for a better game, just a different one. The lack of such a function didn't bother me in my playthrough. And one can always watch YouTube videos of the completed video pairs afterwards. Overall, I strongly recommend this game for fans of Barlow/Half Mermaid's other FMV titles. Do not let the negative reviews stop you from at least trying it.
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This spiritual sequel to Her Story works well to build an immersive story that is well worth the klunky interface. It is an FMV game, so there aren't really any video game graphics to talk about. Apart from the interface, it can only be judged in terms of purely cinematic criteria. Yet, everything works to create a voyeur modern spy movie atmosphere. You would not think those videocalls were shot using traditional cameras and not just screen capture software. The music seems non-existent at first. There's a lot of tasty ambient silence with nothing but computer noises and muffled sounds from surrounding flats. Yet, the OST becomes more pronounced the further you go into the story. The main characters have their own motifs that greatly add to the emotional impact, from somewhat ironic and playfully tragic at the camgirl scenes to downright creepy. The story and script are superb. There isn't much going on per se, the magic is in the details. The characters are extremely well-detailed and every storyline well-developed. This is mostly mature content, but not because of sex of violence - those are far and in-between - but because the story is built on adult fears. The fear of estrangement from your child and wife, the pain of having to betray the trust of your beloved, the anxiety of losing your way and identity and succumbing to madness. Not the stuff kids or even young adults could fully appreciate, not with so few action events going on. The gameplay is the weakest point of this game that WILL scare some people away. It is hard to believe how klunky such an ingenious project can be on the mechanical level. I feel inclined to add a short guide for best experience: bookmark every new video near the beginning, they will automatically be sorted by date. Open every new available video, but watch them in order if possible. Use the in-game note pad for names, events and unused keywords. Most videos come in pairs best watched together. The main gameplay consists in trying to come up with keywords for the paired video. You will probably not find all 170 clips without a guide, but at least 160 are very doable, Do not hesitate to view the ending once before completing the search. One last thing: do not hurry. This game is roughly designed to be completed over a week, like season of a TV show. Rushing it may spoil the experience. I was very hesitant about this game at first because of the interface, but in the end it sucked me in like few other media ever did. I felt like I was the one talking to all these characters and experiencing their fates. The climactic scenes for all the main characters (especially the camgirl and David) hit me like it was all real, leaving me staring at the screen blankly. True integration of Cinema Magic and video games. Unpopularily, I personally liked Telling Lies better than Her Story, though I have to lower the score for the poor interface. I highly recommend you give it a shot to see if it works for you as well. Final score: 7,7
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Definitely longer and more tedious than Her Story, but it is pretty interesting. It has some nice new quality of life features, which Her Story would have benefited from.
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Great amount of movies, ending little disappointing. Missing the twist ending that her story had. Anyway worth playing thumbs up!
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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.
Expand the review
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Frequently Asked Questions
Telling Lies is currently priced at 18.49€ on Steam.
Telling Lies is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 18.49€ on Steam.
Telling Lies received 786 positive votes out of a total of 1,231 achieving a rating of 6.22.
😐
Telling Lies was developed by Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid and Furious Bee Limited and published by Annapurna Interactive.
Telling Lies is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Telling Lies is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Telling Lies is not playable on Linux.
Telling Lies is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for Telling Lies. Explore additional content available for Telling Lies on Steam.
Telling Lies does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Telling Lies does not support Steam Remote Play.
Telling Lies is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Telling Lies.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 10 June 2025 14:22 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 08 June 2025 16:39 |
| Steam price | 14 June 2025 20:40 |
| Steam reviews | 12 June 2025 13:55 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Telling Lies, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Telling Lies
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Telling Lies concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Telling Lies compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
2
Developer
Sam Barlow,
Half Mermaid,
Furious Bee Limited
Publisher
Annapurna Interactive
Release
23 Aug 2019
Platforms
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