Lies of P

Lies of P reimagines the Pinocchio fairy tale as a darkly elegant soulslike. You wake at an abandoned train station in the city of Krat — a Belle Époque-inspired metropolis once defined by its puppet industry, now a hellscape after a plague has driven its automatons and citizens into bloodlust. A mysterious voice guides you through the streets. The choices you make about who to trust, who to listen to, and what to say shape both the unfolding narrative and the kind of puppet you're becoming.

The combat is the genre's standard — methodical, weight-aware melee combat with strict stamina management and severe consequences for over-commitment — but the weapon system is what sets the game apart. Lies of P lets you separate the blade and handle of weapons and recombine them into custom configurations, blending the moveset of one weapon with the stats of another. A second arm slot, the Legion Arm, replaces Pinocchio's left arm with mechanical attachments that fire grappling hooks, shoot fire, deploy shields and more.

The titular lies sit underneath the mechanics as a thematic and narrative system. At specific moments the game gives you the choice to tell the truth or to lie — to comfort someone in despair with a kindness you can't actually deliver, or to be brutally honest about a situation that won't improve. The choices accumulate, the lies shape who Pinocchio is becoming, and the ending you reach reflects the version of the character you've chosen to be.

The city of Krat is one of the strongest atmospheric settings in the soulslike subgenre — a place that wears its corruption as a visual identity, with secrets and symbols hidden in its architecture for players willing to read carefully. The reimagining of the fairy tale is grim, specific, and earns its tonal departure from the source material by paying it close attention rather than ignoring it.