Dark Pinocchio soulslike Lies of P is coming out this year

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Assuming that's not a lie, of course. Get the tape measure.

During IGN Fan Fest, Lies of P, the Bloodborne-esque soulslike reimagining of The Adventures of Pinocchio being made by Round8, got a new trailer and a release window: August, 2023.

That puts Lies of P up against two RPGs. Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 is scheduled to leave early access in the same month, and Sea of Stars, a retro Nintendo-style prequel to The Messenger, is due in August as well.

This latest trailer shows the ruined, plague-ridden city of Krat, where ropy beasts stalk past fallen automatons and puppets. As one of the slimy monsters combines itself with a mechanical figure, reassembling to form something that will probably be a boss we have to fight, a scarred man (who is called Simon Manus according to the Lies of P account on Twitter) siphons blue energy into an occult device.

How all this connects to a story about a wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy isn't entirely obvious. The blue energy could well be a reference to The Fairy With Turquoise Hair who finally gives Pinnochio his wish, and Simon Manus might be an analogue of the theatre master Mangiafuoco (renamed Stromboli in the Disney version). Or not. Maybe Lies of P won't have much to do with the story that inspired it beyond a few names.

One thing we do know is that telling lies will be important. Inverting the original story's message, a tagline for Lies of P declares, "You must always lie to others if you hope to become human." The way you lie can apparently differ, with "interconnected procedural quests that play out depending on how you lie." In classic videogame choice-and-consequence fashion, which fibs you decide to tell will help determine which ending you get.

What with being a living doll, P is able to swap parts of his body in and out to change up his skill set. Weapons can also be combined to make new ones, with research required to find the best combos.

We saw some extended gameplay of Lies of P last year, which highlighted just how soulslike this particular soulslike is, with even its animations and interface resembling those of Bloodborne to a high degree. Not to mention the questgivers who talk through windows, and the chuckle NPCs love to finish their dialogue with. 

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.