Frequently asked

No. There are no questions to agree or disagree with. You play 16 short psychological mini-games and we score how you actually behave on 9 hidden axes. You can't curate the result the way you can curate a questionnaire.

About 12 minutes. The games are short and fast-paced — most people finish in one sitting without noticing the time.

No. There's no account and no login. Your result is encoded in the link itself, so you can share it or simply close the tab.

The axes mirror the nine behavioral factors used in pymetrics-style hiring assessments. Behavioral measures are generally harder to game than self-report, but this is built to be sharp and fun, not a clinical diagnosis. Treat the read as a mirror, not a verdict.

18. Each is a fixed landmark in the 9-axis behavioral space, and your play lands you on the nearest one, along with a rarity score for how unusual your pattern is.

The full archetype result, your per-axis read, the shareable card and the challenge link are all free. The deep read — a cross-axis analysis of how your traits collide, your hidden edge, your blind spot and how people misread you — will cost $4, but during the open beta it's free: share your verdict, leave an email on your result page, and the report is emailed to you within 24 hours.

Yes. Every result has a challenge link. When a friend plays through it, you get a head-to-head comparison showing where your behavior diverges most.

Your answers are turned into a score and encoded into your result link — there's no profile sitting in a database tied to your name. See the privacy page for details.

Same scientific family, different purpose. The nine axes mirror the behavioral factors used in pymetrics-style hiring assessments, and several games adapt the same research paradigms — the balloon task (BART), keypresses, towers, arrows. But TELLS is an independent game built for fun and self-knowledge, not a hiring tool, and it isn't affiliated with pymetrics or any employer.

There's nothing to fail — every profile maps to an archetype, and no archetype is a 'wrong answer'. Cheating is harder than it sounds: the games measure reaction patterns, learning curves and split-second choices, and playing 'as someone else' consistently across 16 different games for 12 minutes is nearly impossible. The tell is in the timing, not the answer.

The balloon game adapts the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a published measure of risk-taking. Every pump earns money; the pop point is unknown. Your average pump count reads your appetite for risk, and because each colour pops differently, the game also measures whether you learn which balloons can be pushed — adaptation, not just nerve.

Yes, as often as you like — there's no account limiting you. Behavioral scores are noisier than questionnaire scores by nature, so small shifts between runs are normal. If you keep landing in the same neighbourhood of archetypes, that neighbourhood is the signal.

The whole test, your archetype, the per-axis read, your edge and blind spot, the shareable card and the challenge link are free, with no account. The deep read — a cross-axis analysis written for your exact profile — will be $4 after launch, but while we're in beta it's free in exchange for a share and an email.

The rarest reads sit around 4–5% of players — profiles extreme enough on several axes at once that most people simply don't play that way. Rarity is shown on every result, and the full list from rarest to most common is on the archetypes page.