Lisa: The Painful
2014
- role-playing (rpg)
- turn-based strategy (tbs)
- adventure
- indie
- horror
- survival
- comedy
- drama
- single player
The story
Lisa is a quirky side-scrolling RPG set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Beneath the charming and funny exterior is a world full of disgust and moral destruction. Players will learn what kind of person they are by being FORCED to make choices. These choices permanently effect the game play. If you want to save a party member from death, you will have to sacrifice the strength of your character. Whether it's taking a beating for them, or chopping off limbs, or some other inhuman way. You will learn that in this world being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive...
What it’s like
Harsh, grimy pixel art in washed-out browns, sickly yellows and ash greys, with sudden bursts of saturated red when the violence arrives. The side-scrolling screens are crowded and cluttered, with ragged figures, scrap-metal shanties and dead landscapes that feel scavenged rather than designed. The soundtrack leans on warped, lo-fi chiptune loops and mournful melodies that slip into long stretches of wind and silence between fights, so the world always feels hollow. Turn-based battles play out in the same stark frame, and the controls and menus feel deliberately clumsy, which makes every grim decision heavier. Tone shifts constantly between deadpan comedy and disturbing cruelty, with dark humour undercutting scenes of real moral horror. Violence is frequent and graphic, including bodily injury, dismemberment and gore rendered in pixel form, alongside drug use, sexual content and nudity, and a constant sense of dread and desperation. This is not gentle, and the pacing is slow, grinding and punishing. It suits players who want a bleak, morally uncomfortable RPG that tests what they will do to survive, and who can tolerate brutal, unsettling content.
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