THE PAST CAN HURT. YOU CAN EITHER RUN FROM IT, OR LEARN FROM IT. 

The Lies We Tell Ourselves is a first person, narrative driven, psychological horror game created by solo developer Poopsy. Available now on Steam is the first of three planned stand alone chapters. This game is not going to be for everyone. There will be players who love it, players who don’t get it and hate it, and players who fall somewhere in the middle. I was in the latter group for a good portion of the 3 hours it took me to complete the game, but my mind was favorably changed by the end.

The game puts you in the role of Vinnie Arno, an only child who as an adult still lives with his parents and lacks any motivation to improve himself. This first chapter, aptly titled Nurture and Nature, revolves around Vinnie’s childhood and the question of who’s to blame for the man he is today. It’s a story that touches on some disturbing topics including mental illness, childhood trauma and abuse. While there are no specific images of these themes, they appear front and center in this story of Vinnie.





COWARDS DIE MANY TIMES BEFORE THEIR DEATHS.  

The game begins after Vinnie returns home, drunk after a night out celebrating his birthday.  In what seems like an alcohol fueled nightmare, he finds himself with a bust of Julius Caesar who turns out to be the embodiment of an old friend. Julius is here to help Vinnie gain insight into why he’s the way he is, accept responsibility for his choices and face his fears. The two of you wander through a combination of an abandoned park and dump, having a nice chat about shared childhood experiences.  You don’t find the setting or the fact that Julius speaks in an unintelligible demon voice and has what look like ligature marks around his neck odd at all. This combination of normal and something-is-seriously-wrong-here is what the rest of the game is like.





BE IT EVER SO HEINOUS, THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

To advance the story you’ll move from one setting to another, solving puzzles to progress. Some scenes are straight out of hell. Others are what you might expect - the location of his parents wedding, Vinnies childhood bedroom, his mom’s art gallery, his dad’s workshop. These mundane locations often look nice at first and you might be fooled into thinking you’ve moved from the nightmare to a normal dream. But then you turn around and an evil looking liquid is pouring out of a wall or a bed is surrounded by faceless statues.   

Everywhere are hints about what life was like for our protagonist. There are objects from the past and notes and letters lying around. There’s plenty of dialogue and you’ll hear remembered fights and snippets of conversations which can be angry, sarcastic or sweet descending rapidly into nasty. These paint a picture of life with an unhappy, detached father and a mother with mental illness. Julius shows up frequently as a demon voice of reason, helping Vinnie to gain clarity through an  understanding of how his upbringing contributed to shaping him.





THE GOOD

This game does creepy atmosphere right. While the real horror is in the story, the visuals do a tremendous job contributing to the dark vibe and were one of the best parts of the game for me. A lot of attention went into the textures, details, colors and lighting. There are long, claustrophobic hallways, rooms with deep saturated blues and reds representing Vinnie’s parents and spaces that looked like someone exploded and their innards were left scattered around. Overall I found it beautifully unsettling.  

An outstanding sound design helped as well. The voice acting is excellent, convincingly portraying a variety of emotions from Vinnie and his parents. The ambient noises, from the buzzing of fluorescent lighting to the sound of a needle stabbing into a fresh brain, all added to the mood. 

I don’t typically pick games for a story, although I appreciate a good one. As stated above, I was uncertain how I felt about this one through a portion of the game, but by the end Vinnie’s story got to me. After a cliffhanger of an ending, I found myself clicking on Chapter 2 hoping there was more content.





THE PROBLEMATIC

My biggest issue was with the game's pace. You know that annoying thing that happens in dreams where you can’t move as fast as you want? There were times when it felt like I was wading through a thick invisible sludge that slowed me down to half speed. I’m sure this was done on purpose to fit the theme, but I found it frustrating. Contributing at times to the sluggish pace is the dialogue. There’s a lot of it, and it often moves too slowly for me. There’s no way to skip through or speed it up, forcing you to let the game control the tempo.   

Less of an issue were some elements of the gameplay. I feel bad complaining about this given that it’s all about the story, but here I go. There’s a bit of exploration which was a good thing, but I wanted much more. There are some really eerie passageways hidden from view behind the pretty walls of Vinnie’s perfect home, but it was always obvious which way to go. It seems like an opportunity to give players some amazing exploration was missed. Then there’s the puzzles. I love solving them in games, and there are good ones here. However some were so cumbersome to solve that they created pockets where I was taken out of the experience. 





THE VERDICT

Horror comes in different forms, and if you like a game that’s all about a horrifying story, don’t mind a slow pace and are ok with the dark themes covered here, it’s well worth the $7.99 price.