LISA – A World of Survival, Sacrifice, and Perverts

Choice is an interesting thing that a lot of games are playing around with these days.

Choice is an interesting thing that a lot of games are playing around with these days. Whether they’re the relatively simple good/evil choices most go with, or the complex, game-changing choices of games like Always Sometimes Monsters , they’re trying to give players a bit more agency in the storyline beyond hitting the bad mens. Even so, choice doesn’t often effect gameplay in big ways for most games, but LISA is looking to give out huge penalties and benefits for the choices you make while playing it.

LISA is a strange-looking RPG, taking place in a wasteland filled with only men, many of whom are acting a little strange since some unknown disaster put them in this situation. You can recruit some of these men in each town to join your party while you try to live in this world, but there are dangerous, terrible people everywhere. If you end up on their bad side, you could lose an eye, a hand, or take a vicious beating, all of which will give the player permanent stat drops. Then again, you can choose to save yourself by letting a party member die (permanently) or by giving up the location of a town for the thugs to loot, losing that town forever. At other times, you might find yourself  sending a teammate to play Russian roulette for big cash, even if there is a high chance they could die for good as well. Choices mean something in LISA , and screwing up means paying a high price. You might soon find yourself without any friends in a very harsh world.

The art style makes all of this seem less morbid, giving it a bizarre sense of humor. It’s as if Earthbound was about dangerous street gangs and perverted priests, and it’s currently working its way through the Greenlight process. Looking fun and soul-crushingly depressing at the same time, developer Dingaling Games is hoping to release the game within the next few months. Feel free to try out the game’s demoand give yourself a taste in the meantime (it’s a ways down the successful Kickstarter page).