Little Red Lie

Honestly not worth it, kind of boring because of the lenghty writing and SO edgy, not the cool way, the depressed teenager edgy.

I do not recommend to play this game

I've read more interesting autobiographies.

The story the game is trying to tell is great. However, it is so bogged down by walls upon walls of unnecessary text that it's nearly impossible to actually connect to the people in any meaningful way. At several points the entire screen goes black as text slowly rolls onto the screen 4 or 5 words at a time. Used once or twice, this is a great way to emphasize dramatic moments, but this game uses this method so often that it's absolutely infuriating. There's not even a decent way to speed up the text if you're a fast reader, so I ended up playing a game on my phone while tapping the space bar through most of the text.

In essence, this isn't a game. It's a college entrance essay written by a depressed teenager with a thesaurus and way to much time on their hands. It's better to just SparkNotes this one.

Now I'm not saying it's absolutely terrible, just that I personally could not connect to it in the way I expect to be able to with novels/stories. If more time was spent trying to say more with less words, or if there were more player controlled sequences than just 2 or 3 minutes of clicking on things here or there, I probably would have liked the game a lot more.

There were a few moments in the game I was genuinely intrigued and could connect with what the characters were feeling whether than just thinking. Those moments were few and far between though.

I have no doubt that there is an audience for this game, just as I know I most certainly am not it. If you prefer visual novels that give you choices, or at least the illusion of choice, this probably isn't the game for you.

If you prefer visual novels that strap you to a chair and demand you listen to what they have to say, you might like this. You also might like it if you're the type of person that reads newspapers, non-fiction, and old adult classics like Of Mice and Men for fun.

Just know what you're getting into.

This really is some of the best writing the medium of gaming has ever seen. I have not read a book, seen a movie, or watched a TV show that honed in on economic dread and all its existential implications so ruthlessly. And although some say it isn't really much of a game, I would disagree. The game format keeps you in a state of soul-numbing complicity with the narrative -- all you can do is spiral down the drain and lie about it, but it's you doing it, and no other medium could make the audience feel this dirty for that. This isn't even a minor masterpiece. It's just a masterpiece.

Overall, this game makes you think....alot. The game is extremely self-aware in its own worth, and the concept is unique and thought-provoking. Although it is a rather long game, you're tempted to play the game through in the first run, as the story remains gripping and leaves you wondering what is even real in our post-truth, consumerist world.

A brutally honest game, where you play from the perspective of two characters, both lying their way through life, hiding their true selves from their peers to avoid hurt and discomfort of others or of themselves. However, reality eventually catches up.

The best feature of this game lies (no pun intended) in its writing. The game manages to get some emotions and relationship issues across that are very hard to put into precise words. Yet, it does so with surgical precision. Its topics include debt, shame, class, sex, emotional and physical abuse, gambling, ageing, death, depression, insecure attachment, and narcissism. But above all, the game tells a story about a deeply flawed society, where the need to meet expectations of society exceeds individual needs, at an astronomical price.

The game is very linear with little opportunity to steer the direction, and the choices appear to matter little, so I would classify it as a visual novel, extremely well put together. The artwork is sparing but gorgeous. The game's simple mechanics are very effective at conveying a sense of lack of control, and conveying the dark disparity between the internal and external dialogues. The story really pulled me in, although I had wished for a slightly more well rounded ending for the female character.

Given all this, especially if you enjoy a good story, care about mental health, and aren't afraid to do a lot of reading of an extremely well put together narrative whilst playing, I can only highly recommend this game!

I was drawn into it because it's setting was the streets and landmarks of Scarborough, Toronto's and I live near there and visited the areas plenty of times. Having played through it I'd say I enjoyed the experience and I would recommend it. It's dark though and not really a "game" you play. It's more like a reading a book but you get the benefit of visuals, sound, and moving the main characters which all help to provide a connection to the setting/atmosphere/world that the game is portraying.

There's definitely an audience for this type of narrative; it's brutally nihilistic and dismal. How would I summarise it best - oppressive hyper-realism? It reads like a drama novel, with appropriately long-winded scenes and fitting twists. It seemed a little "miserable for misery's sake" to me, but I'm sure that's exactly what fans of this genre are looking for.

However, I would not recommend this to the majority of people looking for a narrative experience. Unless you're a part of the aforementioned audience, I can see this being a slog. Every new turn of the story brought more excruciating hopelessness. Seriously, the game's bursting at the seams with it! I appreciate what was trying to be done but was unable to really enjoy it and found a few scenes difficult to get through, unfortunately.

That being said, I did enjoy the way the characters were written. They felt natural and right at home in their, well, depressing world.

Little Red Lie might very well be the best game I've ever played that I cannot recommend. Not because the game isn't good - I thought it was great, in fact - but because the game is simply too depressing.

Nowadays people might hear or read that statement and think it's being hyperbolic or melodramatic, presumably because "depressing" games like Celeste and whatnot have become more popular lately. Well, they'd be wrong.

Here is the problem: Celeste and similar acclaimed games, albeit a game that is about depression, isn't depressing. What do I mean when I say that? When you play that game you get sad, but only moderately. You feel a kind of melancholy that is just sad enough to keep you playing, just dark enough to allow you to see a little bit of the light at the end of the tunnel. Will O'Neill's games, both this and Actual Sunlight, are not palatable games about depression, they are *depressing* games about depression. They are not like Please Knock on My Door, The Cat Lady, Depression Quest, etc, because these games merely teach you about depression; Actual Sunlight and Little Red Lie will make you *feel* depression. These other games are more like Wikipedia or WebMD articles about depression - they can describe it and can summarize it and present it visually, but they will never make you *feel* depressed. That's what makes Will O'Neill's games so special, but it's also what makes them virtually impossible to recommend, because people only want to experience depression vicariously, not viscerally. His games don't care about getting "artsy" or "deep" about the subject matter at hand. They don't care about making you walk away with something profound you can use to enhance your life - and why would they? Depression, by definition, is not profound. It is not something you can use to enhance your life. That's what I love about his games, because they never overestimate the power or the value of art as some sort of scapegoat proxy to overestimate the value of the artist him or herself. His games implicitly understand that "artistic" depictions of depression are rarely all that depressing, and that ironically ends up sacrificing some of the emotional potency. It is merely a raw and unadulterating abyss, and playing Little Red Lie, bleak and tenebrous as can be, is like diving into an abyss. You do not walk away from this game as you would after watching Inside Out or Bojack Horseman, with a vague and slightly uncomfortable but ultimately welcoming sense of bitter-sweetness. You walk away from Little Red Lie wanting to kill yourself. That's what "games about depression" actually do, and it is for that reason that I cannot recommend it to 99.99% of people.

But I still have to give Little Red Lie a thumbs up because at the end of the day it is by far one of the best written games I have ever played.

The game and its story are so much more than about hammering you over the head with a bleak, pessimistic, modernist perspective on unyielding income inequality and how it is (currently) intersecting with mental health, eroding social values and trust, and the narcissism of small differences. It is a fantastic psychological dive into two people who, despite never meeting, share so much in common. Sarah, 38, and Arthur, 46, are seemingly two very different people - one a broke and unemployed anxious neurotic and the other a self-aggrandizing sociopath who literally believes that money is the meaning of life - to the point you would expect their interior monologues to be very different from each other in terms of both style and prose, but their soliloquies being near-identical serves an important purpose: showing that they are the same person. How so? That's easy: they're both pathological liars whose fates, personalities, desires, values, beliefs and prejudices have been almost solely determined by their income. In fact, the only meaningful difference between them is that one is poor and one is rich. Swap their financial statuses around and they would effectively have the same personality traits (which just so happens to be almost entirely character flaws).

If I have one controversial takeaway from this game, let it be this: The only reason why Sarah is moderately likeable and sympathetic is because she is poor. Imagine someone like her, with all her unjustified idiosyncrasies and incessant catastrophizing, but rich - it's not a pretty picture. That's why she's juxtaposed with Arthur, it's to teach you that money does more than corrupt - money *discloses*. Money *belies*. Money merely *reveals* what was already there. There are things about human nature worse than suffering from over-intellectualized sophistry or undiagnosed panic attacks, and that's what Sarah and Arthur are there to teach you.

The game also introduces some very out-of-left-field 4th wall-breaking shenanigans that are very reminiscent of Undertale or The Stanley Parable, but even this aspect is fresh and unique because unlike these two examples, Little Red Lie (for the most part) upholds an intense veneer of realism, which only makes the contrast between the two main characters and the mystery narrator from the realm of magical realism (?) even more fascinating.

The great tragedy about Little Red Lie is that even though it is so hard to recommend, it must be recommended to as many people as possible. The subject matter is undeniably some of the most relevant and topical that any video game has ever tackled, and while it doesn't really dive into new territory (many books and movies about the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath already exist, as an easy example), the quality of the characters and the writing offers a fresh perspective on intergenerational strife and poverty that virtually anyone on the planet over the age of 15 would appreciate, if it weren't for the immoderately fatalistic outlook of the plot.

I think back on games other people have called "very bleak" or "incredibly dark" and they usually end up being games that take place in some fantasy or unrealistic/futuristic setting like The Last Of Us 2, but what really makes Little Red Lie dark is that it is so realistic, in fact its biggest issue is that it is *too* realistic to handle, but that realism is precisely what needs to be handled if anyone wants a chance at enduring these kinds of problems should they ever happen.

And, while this may be a sentiment many people won't see eye-to-eye with me on, I really respect the mere fact that Little Red Lie held back no punches. It was actually refreshing to see a story, particularly one in a video game of all places, examine the complex, interweaving and dynamic whirlwind of poverty, mental illness, familial stress, narcissism, suicide, rape, unbridled corporatism and financially-based maladaptive daydreaming and bring it all to its intense and extreme crescendo of a logical conclusion - a world in which everyone admits, even if only internally and privately, even if they have the typical powers that come with being a multi-millionaire, that few can wield the most dangerous thing among all: Truth.

This game is very dark and pessimistic but so well-written and insightful that I felt compelled to keep playing.
It presents you with bleak ideas about how the world works, and dares you to say "That's not true." It doesn't put me in a good mood to play it, but it's a special game that I'm glad I found.

An example: one of the characters has an internal monologue about people buying "How to become successful" books even though it's pointless because the real key to becoming successful was being born in a family with money and connections.

I recommend the game, it oddly feels therapeutic to see such a raw presentation of the human struggle.

Money is the most important thing

• Great storytelling
  
• Dark and misanthropic
  
• Nice soundtrack
  
• Makes you think
  

[*]-

Pretty good, overall.

Little red lie prominently examines the lives of two characters from separate sides of the tracks. Sarah, a 38 year old who is wrestling with her lack of prospects, and Arthur, an arguable sociopath who makes his millions selling false hope to the downtrodden. The story is told almost entirely through their own eyes, maintaining a cohesive balance quite well between two unreliable narrators.

The general themes to expect are where the lines lie between hope and hopelessness, and between success and failure in the modern economy. Bouncing these concepts between the id, ego, and super-ego of our protagonists, the author keeps you on your toes while you analyse what's being presented to you as fact, lie, or a grey area between.

For the most part, this is pulled off as convincing introspection and projected observations of the world our characters come from. It's not perfect, though. There are moments where the disconnect and vagueness detracts from the whole. On more than one occasion I asked myself why a character expressed something that seemed out of place with their regular thought process. It never stopped the pace of the story though, so that I can easily forgive. However, what was more pace-breaking and detrimental to the overall tone were the two awkwardly placed moments where the player is addressed directly, and ham-handedly insulted. It seems backwards to shatter the fourth wall for a moment, especially when it's seemingly done for no reason other than to treat the reader like an inattentive child. They feel like they were shoe-horned in for some sort of shock value, where a moment of silence for the audience to digest the previous scene would have been far more appropriate.

I argue that these inconsistencies detract from the overall experience, but they definitely don't ruin it. I got a lot out of the game and I think the stories told are worth reading.

Around 4 hours of content but as the majority of that content is reading, your mileage may vary.

I can't in good faith recommend this game. Absolute linearity and limited gameplay elements and choices aside, the view this game presents of the world seems more at home in the mind of a teenager riddled with angst and a rather shallow grip on socioeconomic issues than in a game wanting to be taken seriously.

It managed to bring up some interesting questions but stopped short of really exploring them (the sister's depression (perhaps better explored in Actual Sunlight), the sacrifices made for family, the strain of poverty, how exactly the Canadian healthcare system got in such a weird state, etc). There were a few good lines that stopped me in my tracks - having dealt with severe depression myself, the examination of the sister was occasionally like a slap in the face. But I found no real grip in the poverty, or the relationships, or the situations as they existed throughout the bulk of the game. Lies and monologues were occasionally revealing, but presented so boldly and plainly they became grating or difficult to take seriously.

It also managed to make both its progagonists largely unrealistic and therefore largely unrelatable. Though they're evidently based in real accounts and sometimes that manages to shine through, the actions the characters took veered more and more into absolute idiocy and the player was left wondering what the hell these people were doing or actually trying to achieve. I suppose watching these characters create trainwreck after trainwreck for themselves is about the only way you could accept their endings (logical only if your logic is based firmly in the aforementioned teenage angst).

As with all reviews I will admit that this is biased by what I seek from interactive experiences. I can deal with reality and horror and sorrow within the context of games, but this was downright bleak, through-and-through without hope or cease. I got through it, but only with the help of several pints of ice cream and some long breaks between really nasty sections (cornering the secretary in the elevator leaps immediately to mind). If you're already having a hard time, steer well clear of this game unless you find bleak, energy-draining experiences cathartic.

I loved this game, I couldn't stop playing it until I finished it.
Very original, the way you can interact with the option "Lie about.." it's for sure different.
The narrative is very impressing and in some ways can be also relatable whether you agree with something
a character says, or you recognize the realistic aspects of it.

The game is very engaging and the story is very interesting, as long as you like to read a bit , it can be really good.
The art style is amazing as well! Every once in a while a full screen art is displayed. The music is also very fitting to the
whole atmosphere of this game.

I can only say "Well done" to the team who got together to create this amazing masterpiece. Totally worth the money.

Also in the end, you will get all the achievements as long as you finish the game, so there is that for those who are interested in that kind of thing.

I bought this game because I loved (if that's the right word) the developer's previous game, Actual Sunlight.

Similar to Actual Sunlight, LRL is a narrative-based game with minimal choice and interactivity. However, the game uses this limited interactivity very carefully, allowing you to pace the game as you want and explore as much of the character's inner thoughts as possible.

The game is an exceptionally well-written exploration of debt, capitalism, family and mental illness. I'm not sure I agree with its uncompromising nihilism, which at times can come across as a bit of a rant. But everything is written with such flare that this doesn't become an irritant, even over the 6 hours of play it took to finish. At least for me, the writing was constantly challenging my expectations and making me challenge the characters, the game, and my own prejudices. So I may be coming down too hard on the nihilism - the ending of the game left me wanting to say "screw you, game, I'm better than that." It's difficult to know which responses are intentional and which are just my own unique response to the game - by my consideration, a good test for a complex piece of art.

All in all, a highly recommended game. I feel like I ought to revisit it in the way you revisit a great book. Unlike most games, I feel there are still many depths to plumb in this story before I feel I adequately understand or appreciate everything the author has tried to do.

Game is savage... don't let the people telling you (correctly) that it's a work of art or a great narrative make you think this is some kind of schmaltzy hyper-reflective slow-burn. Nah. This game is punchy as hell. I'm a pretty underread dumbo so bear with me here: it reads like a more mature version of Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis or George Carlin or Aaron Sorkin. Maybe you think those guys are fundamentally dumb, but they're not boring! This game isn't boring, so it avoids the biggest problem that many narrative games have, which is being boring. The characters have acid-tongued inner monologues and it's fun to read even as the actual content of the story makes you grow grey hairs. With some luck, images of this game will end up being posters in some ding-dong's dorm room.

I appreciated a lot of aspects of the game but that was what I appreciated the most. I'll leave the rest to the other reviewers.

In terms of grievances, I have but two:
- Small technical issues. Some bad collision bounds. Some text that should have been red but wasn't.
- The story has blanks which the reader is meant to fill in. By the time these came up, the game had proven itself as a trustworthy dissector of modern society. It had the right to fill those blanks in.

Anyway it's a real achievement. Speaking of achievements, I finished the game with 3 of the locked, and I really want them, really badly! That means the game is good.

Little Red Lie is a very sad story, and the saddest part of it is that it feels so real. Here's my no spoiler review.

The game is about money, it's about some people desperately needing more of it, and some people having more of it than they can spend. The story is told through well paced sequences and the game keeps throwing little surprises in your way to keep things fresh.

The pixel art looks fine but the art really shines through the HD drawings that come up on important events. Realisticly drawn images silently blend into the very dark nature of the game that stretches its realism into events and symbolism that goes far beyond the realism it seems to be proud of.

It's a very well written story, the kind that we as players don't get to witness very often if at all.

What might make you not like this game? The story is mostly linear, and there aren't many decisions you get to make in the game. The writing is dark and texts are long, and it takes its subjects seriously, that might not be for everybody. Know that what you are getting into is more like a thoughtful movie than your everyday game. You are mostly playing to read, and observe the story.

I am happy that this game exists, it's not something I thought I would be playing. It's not a game that could exist as a product 10 years ago. These type of themes are a great fit for movies and books but we rarely get to play them. I think this game is important and you should give it a chance. Play an hour of it and you will know if it's your type of game or not.

I just finished playing Little Red Lie and ho-ly ****.

I've played a lot of serious games with really strong narratives. Seen writing of all quality in games that express my generation's fears and frustration with what we have to contend with. None of them spoke to me on such a visceral level as Little Red Lie did.

While not a 1:1 analogy of my own life, I found myself in tears at several points of the game because of how much it mirrored things I lived through. I've been poor. I've been wealthy. I'm very fortunate to be comfortable right now. Went through the awkwardness of seeing a friend who once treated me to coffee now washing dishes...and the icy fear of seeing clients from my very last professional sector job in their homes when I had to take a sharing economy gig to pay my bills.

I identify with Sarah's character a lot. While I'm a tad younger, I see so many of my past behaviors before I got treated for depression. The strained relationship with her sister, worrying about being her sole provider someday. I was totally transfixed because it felt like my life was suddenly on a screen.

Play this now if you want a hard-hitting narrative that might hit REALLY close to home if you're stuck between Millenial and Gen X/older Millennial. It reminded me of why I went through everything I survived to become a game developer. To hang onto that hope despite the world of **** our generation got stuck with, and tell the stories that need to be told.

Pessismistic and fuming, Little Red Lie is less an arc and more a pulse check on a flatline.

If you're frustrated, Little Red Lie will speak to you. If you're not, it might elucidate the way that a significant % of your neighbors and friends feel.

What a wonderful little game, full of poignant commentary on society...both that of today and of the foreseeable future. The writing is completely solid. I love this type of story-driven experience. Some sassy fourth-wall breaking also needs to be mentioned. Overall a very welcome gaming experience!

***POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS***

If you've ever been slapped in the face in the dark, you know what it feels like to play through LIttle Red Lie.

On the surface, LRL plays like a sprite-based adventure game, where certain poeple or objects need to be interacted with to proceed to the next piece of narrative. Of course, "interact" typically doesn't involve the types of decisions and actions you'll be making in this game. Naturally I won't spoil anything major, but let's just say that scrambling to rub one out before a work meeting doesn't come close to some of the the scenarios LRL will guide you through before the climax (see what I did there...)

This is a story that had to be a game - a book would not suffice. The ambience of the music, accompanied by the ryhmic pauses of the written dialougue, pulled me into each encounter like no page with words ever could. By the end of my 5-6 hour play through, these were no longer characters, but poeple I had given voices to... people I might have known otherwise.

Make no mistake, though. There is an antagonist in Little Red Lie, and depnding on the player, once it clicks, it clicks. Sure, on the surface it may seem like we are dealing with typical adversaries such as anxiety, depression, illness, and unquechable greed - but that's simply window dressing. What will truly exhaust the player is self-reflection. The mirror that this game forces in front of your own face is far more punishing than anything I've encountered from FROM Software. It is this reflection, like being interrogated under spot lights, that had me laughing out loud one minute, to choking back tears the next, to just simply putting the controller down and staring at the basement floor for a while.

After the credits rolled (and after a very unexpected experience that had me recalling moments from Nier: Automata's finale), I spent some time reflecting on the spiral I had finally reached the bottom of - completely convinced of my own sociopathic nature - and I felt a sense of resignation. This is game you cannot win, nor would you want to be able to win. It's a mirror to your soul, and an indictment on your existance. It's also fanatstic and necessary.

Why would I lie...?