Little Red Lie nails the weirdness of moving back home

 (Note: this article contains mild spoilers for a less spoilery preview here.)

"You can't be an adult in the place you grew up. It isn't your job there, and you can't break up the order of things in a place where that order is everything."

The curtain has barely raised on Little Red Lie when this monologue is uttered. It articulates something many of us have likely felt while living with parents in adulthood—particularly when returning after a period of independence.

That sentiment is expressed by Little Red Lie's protagonist Sarah Stone, who finds herself approaching 40 years of age and moving back to the home she grew up in. It's a regressive move in the eyes of society, and one that leaves her uncomfortable about what people will conclude about her numerous failures—romantic, professional, and financial.

Sarah is bereft of her fragile ties to adulthood, losing her job and being forced to sell her house, but she doesn't reveal this to her parents. Instead she clings to the clothes and the routine, getting ready for the office every day but instead going to the coffee shop. She is a normal adult, and nobody can prove otherwise.

Sarah maintains a set of Very Adult Reasons for being back home: she's providing support to her ageing parents; it's merely short-term while she gets back on her feet. These kinds of lies are what the story really revolves around, and the game betrays any dishonest thought or line of dialogue by highlighting it in red.

But Sarah also spent her happiest years in this place, which obviously brings with it a comforting familiarity. This is best shown in a sequence when Sarah sets out on a late-night hunt for the family cat, navigating the well-trodden carpets in complete darkness with an ease that only decades of knowing a place intimately can bring.

Little Red Lie is the latest slice of interactive fiction from Canadian writer and developer Will O'Neill. Never one to shy away from the darker and more painful aspects of modern life, he previously explored depressive thirtysomething aimlessness in