TELL — a 90s high school murder mystery

01 — The Game

A Game Built on Immersive Social Dynamics

Not a dialogue tree. A conversation you have to pay attention to.

When you think someone is lying to you, you question them — and the game gives you nothing but their face and their answers. No meter. No highlighted clue. No confirmation that you were right.

01

Find the anchor

Ask something you already know the answer to. Now you know what this person looks like telling the truth — their pace, their pauses, their real smile.
02

Find the tell

Ask about something small they would rather not discuss. Everyone conceals differently. One goes still. One talks faster. One holds eye contact a little too well.
03

Call it

Close their exit, ask what you came for, and compare. Accept the answer or accuse them — and live with it either way.

02 — The Story

Tellerman High, summer 1996

[ PLACEHOLDER — jacket copy, in your words. ]

Clay Mason is eighteen, remembers everything he has ever seen, and is not really a student. He is here because three people connected to this school are dead, because the detective who should be investigating has been taken off the case, and because a boy with a perfect memory can walk a hallway and come back with more than a warrant ever would.

What nobody told him is how much everyone else is hiding. The girl at the lockers is protecting a friend. The janitor is protecting himself. The teacher everyone trusts is the reason a family fell apart. Most of it has nothing to do with the murders — and that is exactly the problem.

Placeholder images — click to enlarge.

FacialRAS driving a MetaHuman performance — Placeholder — swap for the looping NPC reaction reel.

03 — The Tech

Built on FacialRAS

A performance engine for MetaHumans, written for this game — and usable in yours.

A game about reading faces needs faces worth reading. FacialRAS is an Unreal Engine 5 plugin that drives MetaHuman performance procedurally: where a character is looking and why, what they feel, how their personality shapes what they show, and what leaks out when they try to hide it.

No motion capture. No per-character animation. It runs on a crowd.

20+: NPCs live at once
0: mocap sessions
18: months, solo
5.8: Unreal Engine

Attention
Eight-tier social arbitration — characters notice what a person would notice, and look away when a person would.
Emotion
A continuous emotional state shaped by personality, driving face, posture and breath rather than canned expressions.
Concealment
Characters mask what they feel — and leak it. Masked smiles, suppressed tension, micro-leakage.
Conversation
A director that stages scenes, handles interruptions, and resumes them the way real conversations recover.

04 — The Creator

One person, eighteen months

TELL is made by Matt Baamonde at Baazar Studios.

A Senior Unreal Engine Artist whose work spans hundreds of TV shows, films, AAA virtual productions and live XR events — now pointing that toolset at a game of his own.

[ PLACEHOLDER — two or three sentences in your voice: background, what you did before this, why this game. ]

Everything running in TELL — the attention system, the emotion and personality model, the conversation director, the procedural face and body performance — is original work built from scratch, then used to make a game with it.

mattbaamonde.com mattb.ai hello@tell-game.com

Solo developer 18 months C++ / Blueprint / Unreal 5.8 Atlanta, GA

05 — The Roadmap

Where it stands

TELL is past the idea stage. Everything marked shipped is built and running in engine today. The rest is content, polish, and the work of finishing.

Shipped

The performance engine

Attention and gaze, emotion and personality, full-face dialogue, the conversation director, procedural body and idle library.
Shipped

A world to put it in

The vertical-slice demo level, 20+ concurrent NPCs, story beats, save, journal and inventory.
In build

QUESTION

The interrogation mode — find the anchor, find the tell, bait the question, then decide whether you believe them.
Next

The playable demo

Recorded voice cast, branching story beats, and a public build.
Next

The cinematic

One motion-capture shoot for the hero scene — FacialRAS layered over a captured performance.
Next

FacialRAS, released

Documentation, a sample project, and the plugin published for other Unreal teams.

The Cast

Everyone is hiding something

Most of it has nothing to do with the case. Telling those two apart is the game.

Player character

Clay Mason

Dropped out of Tellerman two years ago to look after his mother. Sent back in under a false name, because he can read a face better than anyone they have.
The voice in your ear

Marcus Bullock

An agent working off the books, hunting the man who took his partner. He cannot move openly on the school, so he runs a teenager instead.
The one you were sent to find

Tara Ashcroft

Head cheerleader and the program's pre-med prodigy, still carrying the twin sister she lost at eleven. Someone has decided she is next.
Missing

Grace Burke

Bullock's partner. Taken before Clay ever set foot in the building, and the reason he does not get to say no.
Maintenance crew

Jeremiah Voss

Funny, easy to talk to, and always a half-second wrong on the timing. He whittles owls in the boiler room and he knows every door in the school.
Visiting faculty

Dr. Stephen Richter

The hematologist the program was built around. Ask him about Tara's sister and a very composed man stops being composed.
Talks to everyone

Lacey Brennan

She trades in everybody's business, which is what makes the one secret she is actually keeping so loud.
Benefactor

Charles Ashcroft

Tara's father. Pharmaceutical money, a philanthropist's smile, and the only face in the school that gives Clay nothing at all.

The World

Tellerman High, 1996

One building, one afternoon, and a school that has been renovated around whatever was already here.

Tellerman High

Clay's old school, reopened as an elite pre-med summer program. Class of nobody he recognises any more. The mascot is an owl.
The hallway

Eight groups of students between you and one answer. You are not allowed to leave until somebody tells you where Tara is.
Tara's locker

Bullock wants it open. You can force it and be the guy who forced it, or find the combination she threw away.
Richter's office

Locked, and you do not have the keys. Through the door, an argument you were never meant to hear, about bloodwork.
The ruins room

A founding-era classroom the renovation never reached, behind the construction tape. Students sneak in. So does someone else.
Clay's house

A half-built fusor in the garage, his mother in the next room, and a ham radio on the roof still tuned to his father's silent frequency.

Stills

In engine

Placeholder images throughout — swap for character renders and gameplay captures.

Welcome to

A Game Built on Immersive Social Dynamics

Find the anchor

Find the tell

Call it

Tellerman High, summer 1996

Built on FacialRAS

Attention

Emotion

Concealment

Conversation

One person, eighteen months

Where it stands

The performance engine

A world to put it in

QUESTION

The playable demo

The cinematic

FacialRAS, released

Everyone is hiding something

Clay Mason

Marcus Bullock

Tara Ashcroft

Grace Burke

Jeremiah Voss

Dr. Stephen Richter

Lacey Brennan

Charles Ashcroft

Tellerman High, 1996

Tellerman High

The hallway

Tara's locker

Richter's office

The ruins room

Clay's house

In engine

Say something