Lies of P opens in an abandoned train car at Krat Central Station, and that is where its ambitions announce themselves. You wake as a puppet with no memory and no name beyond a letter. The city outside is screaming. Within an hour you have a sword, a mechanical arm, and a train full of questions. Within ten, you understand that Round8 Studio has built something that borrows heavily and still manages to feel like its own grim machine.
Trailer, via Gematsu.
A Puppet That Can Lie
Lies of P is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Neowiz and Nough, formerly Round8 Studio, and published by Neowiz. It is a Soulslike set in Krat, a fictional city modeled on Belle Époque Europe. Its protagonist is Pinocchio, called P, a puppet who looks exactly like a human and who, unlike the other Puppets, is not bound by the Covenant that forbids lying or harming people.
That single twist is the game’s best idea. You are not a hero. You are a machine that can lie, and the game keeps asking what that freedom costs.
The story is loosely based on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, to whom the game is dedicated. The fairy tale is only a skeleton. Krat prospered on Ergo, a resource the Order of Alchemists used to power autonomous Puppets designed by Giuseppe Geppetto. Then came the Petrification Disease, which blinded people before killing them. Then came the Puppet Frenzy, which turned most Puppets murderous despite the Covenant and left the city a slaughterhouse. P is untouched by the Frenzy. He has free will. He can lie or kill as a human would.
Sophia Sends You to the Hotel
Sophia, a woman who speaks to P remotely, directs him to Hotel Krat, which becomes his base of operations. It is the one place in the game that does not want you dead. You rescue survivors and bring them back. You meet Gemini, a puppet who lives inside a lamp P carries and who talks to him throughout the journey. You rescue Geppetto, and later Lorenzini Venigni, the leader of Krat’s mechanical industry. The Stalkers, the human armed forces of Krat, cross your path with allegiances and goals that differ from individual to individual.
That structure is familiar, and Lies of P knows it. The hotel is a hub. The choice between truth and lie is a binary that shapes sub-plots and the overall narrative. What separates this game from its influences is not the shape of the loop but the texture inside it.
Krat is a beautiful ruin. The Belle Époque architecture, the gaslamps, the wet cobblestone, the automatons standing frozen mid-task in alleyways and on rooftops — it is a city that was elegant and is now a living hell, and the art direction never lets you forget which one it used to be.
As P, whose freedom of will bypasses Krat’s laws of robotics, the player must use melee weapons, a mechanical arm, and “Ergo” energy (serving as both XP and currency) to navigate the enemy-infested city
The Blade and the Handle
Combat is where Lies of P earns its keep. You choose one of three combat styles at the start, which sets your attributes and initial weapon. From there you use melee weapons and Legion Arms, including a grappling hook. Every weapon except boss weapons splits into a blade and a handle that can be upgraded and combined with other components. Combine them and you get a Fable Art, a unique ability that fires when the corresponding bar fills. Durability drops during combat and grindstones restore it while granting temporary power-ups.
The parry is the heart of it. Parrying staggers an enemy and damages their weapon. Blocking costs you a sliver of health that a successful counterattack partially restores. That exchange — take a little damage, win it back by staying aggressive — gives every fight a pulse. It is not enough to dodge and poke. You have to stand in the fire, read the swing, and answer it. Boss fights are long, punishing, and legible. When you lose, you usually know why.
Ergo is both XP and money, which means every level-up is a purchase you did not make elsewhere. You spend it on vitality, vigor, and other attributes, and you spend Quartz on a skill tree that unlocks gradually. Quartz comes from shops or from bosses and minibosses. Skills have slots for passive bonuses. Later, Wishstones grant temporary power-ups like increased damage or health regeneration to P or a spirit. It is a lot of systems, and the game layers them without drowning you. The weapon assembly alone justifies the price of admission.
What the Item Text Hides
Much of the story arrives through optional dialogue and flavor text on items, which means when you learn a particular fact depends on how far you have pushed and what you bothered to read. That is a deliberate choice and a defensible one. It also means the narrative can feel thin if you mainline the critical path. Level design drew mixed opinions on release, and it is easy to see why. Krat is gorgeous, but its corridors do not always surprise. Some areas are more hallway than city.
The voice cast and sound design, by contrast, are consistently strong. The puppets creak. The Ergo hums. The silence in the hotel between missions does more work than any cutscene. Praise for the combat, visuals, sound, and vocal performances was widespread when the game launched in September 2023 for macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The level design and narrative drew split reactions. Both things can be true.
Three Million Units and Overture
By June 2025, Lies of P had sold over 3 million units. It was nominated for several year-end accolades, including The Game Awards and the Golden Joystick Awards, and appeared on numerous lists of the top video games of 2023. A prequel expansion, Overture, followed. That run matters because it tells you what kind of game this is: not a cult curiosity, not a one-off experiment, but a title that found a real audience and earned a second chapter.
What it did not do is reinvent the Soulslike. It took the template — the hub, the stamina bar, the punishing bosses, the interconnected ruin — and dressed it in a specific and memorable skin. The Pinocchio frame is not a gimmick. It is the reason the choices land. A puppet that can lie is a puppet that can disappoint the people who made it, and Geppetto calling P his son is the most interesting thing in the game precisely because you are never sure what that word means to either of them.
The Score
Lies of P is an 8.5/10. The weapon assembly and the parry system are the best reasons to play it, and the Belle Époque ruin of Krat is one of the most fully realized settings of its release year. The level design sags in places, and the story hides too much of itself behind optional text for a game this interested in its own plot. But the combat holds, the choices bite, and the whole thing has a point of view. It is a Soulslike that knows what it is borrowing and knows what it is adding. That is rarer than it sounds.
For anyone who has bounced off the genre because the worlds felt interchangeable, this is the one to try. Krat is not interchangeable. Neither is P.
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