According to the official Lies of P Twitter account, Round8 Studio’s Lies of P demo has reached 1 million downloads. It shows that there’s a surprising amount of interest in a game that at first looks like a bit of a clone–and the fact that the studio didn’t overhaul FromSoftware’s formula a lot after playing the demo myself. However, they made great use of the lack of a PC Bloodborne port, which was a barrier to entry that prevented me from playing Lovecraftian death grinders to this day.
P’s Lies takes place in Krat, and puts you in an Elizabethan construct—a puppet—with its long curly hair and elaborate appearance straight out of the pages of Twilight fan fiction. A petrifying disease is ravaging Krat’s denizens, and its guardian puppets have gone on a rampage, and it’s up to you and a mechanized cricket to find out the truth.
The demo showed the game to be a convincing replica of the real deal, with enough ambitious twists inside that I couldn’t even see the strings. It works well, shows off a surprising amount of preview play – I spent about 3 hours – and adds some new mechanics to keep things fresh.
You can mix and match weapon handles with their business purpose to tinker with their stats, and one tweak – the ability to scrape back your last healing item after dealing enough damage – makes me wish it made it into the genre main content of . P’s Lie even pulls some DNA from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which focuses on parrying attack chains on frantic dodge rolls.
Similar to the Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty’s Game Pass inclusion, getting people to get their gloves on something they would otherwise ignore because of the transcript is paying off. The demo’s widespread reception has turned many skeptics, myself included, into surprise fans of the game’s Burton-esque mirror dimension of puppets and robotic clowns. P’s Lies will also be coming to Game Pass on day one.
In what could prove to be another crouching link, Team Ninja has announced a reciprocal collaboration with P’s Lie, though only Cricket is on the details for now. I can only speculate, but given the game’s imminent release, I doubt there’s anything more than a new set of gear to strap on our mechanized softboy.
You can download the Lies of P demo yourself until June 27, after which you’ll have to wait until September 19 to get the full version.