Masters of puppets: How ROUND8 Studio carved out a niche for Lies of P

Lies of P is closer to its surprising source material than you might think.

Based on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, the Apple Design Award-winning game is a macabre reimagining of the story of a puppet who longs to be a real boy. Collodi’s story is still best known as a children’s fable. But it’s also preprogrammed with more than its share of darkness — which made it an appealing foundation for Lies of P director Jiwon Choi.

“When we were looking for stories to base the game on, we had a checklist of needs,” says Choi. “We wanted something dark. We wanted a story that was familiar but not entirely childish. And the deeper we dove into Pinocchio, the more we found that it checked off everything we were looking for.”

ADA FACT SHEET

Lies of P

• Winner: Visuals and Graphics
• Team: ROUND8 Studio (developer), NEOWIZ (publisher)
• Available on: Mac
• Team size: 100
• Previous accolades: App Store 2023 Mac Game of the Year, App Store Editors’ Choice

Developed by the South Korea-based ROUND8 Studio and published by its parent company, NEOWIZ, Lies of P is a lavishly rendered dark fantasy adventure and a technical showpiece for Mac with Apple silicon. Yes, players control a humanoid puppet created by Geppetto. But instead of a little wooden boy with a penchant for little white lies, the game’s protagonist is a mechanical warrior with an array of massive swords and a mission to battle through the burned-out city of Krat to find his maker — who isn’t exactly the genial old woodcarver from the fable.

“The story is well-known, and so are the characters,” says Choi. “We knew that to create a lasting memory for gamers, we had to add our own twists.”

Those twists abound. The puppet is accompanied by a digital lamp assistant named Gemini — pronounced “jim-i-nee,” of course. A major character is a play on the original’s kindly Blue Fairy. A game boss named Mad Donkey is a lot more irritable than the donkeys featured in Collodi’s story. And though nobody’s nose grows in Lies of P, characters have opportunities to lie in a way that directly affects the storyline — and potentially one of the game’s multiple endings.

We knew that to create a lasting memory for gamers, we had to add our own twists.

Jiwon Choi, Lies of P director

“If you play without knowing the original story, you might not catch all those twists,” says Choi. “But it goes the other way, too. We’ve heard from players who became curious about the original story, so they went back and found out about our twists that way.”

There’s nothing curious about the game’s success: In addition to winning a 2024 Apple Design Award for Visuals and Graphics, Lies of P was named the App Store’s 2023 Mac Game of the Year and has collected a bounty of accolades from the gaming community. Many of those call out the game’s visual beauty, a world of rich textures, detailed lighting, and visual customization options like MetalFX upscaling and volumetric fog effects that let you style the ruined city to your liking.

For that city, the ROUND8 team added another twist by moving the story from its original Italian locale to the Belle Èpoque era of pre-WWI France. “Everyone expected Italy, and everyone expected steampunk,” says Choi, “but we wanted something that wasn’t quite as common in the gaming industry. We considered a few other locations, like the wild west, but the Belle Èpoque was the right mix of beauty and prosperity. We just made it darker and gloomier.”

We considered a few other locations, like the wild west, but the Belle Èpoque was the right mix of beauty and prosperity. We just made it darker and gloomier.

Jiwon Choi, Lies of P director

To create the game’s fierce (and oily) combat, Choi and the team took existing Soulslike elements and added their own touches, like customizable weapons that can be assembled from items lying around Krat. “We found that players will often find a weapon they like and use it until the ending,” says Choi. “We found that inefficient. But we also know that everyone has a different taste for weapons.”

The system, he says, gives players the freedom to choose their own combinations instead of pursuing a “best” pre-ordained weapon. And the strategy worked: Choi says players are often found online discussing the best combinations rather than the best weapons. “That was our intention when creating the system,” he says.

Also intentional: The game’s approach to lying, another twist on the source material. “Lying in the game isn’t just about deceiving a counterpart,” says Choi. “Humans are the only species who can lie to one another, so lying is about exploring the core of this character.”

It’s also about the murky ethics of lying: Lies of P suggests that, at times, nothing is as human — or humane — as a well-intentioned falsehood.

“The puppet of Geppetto is not human,” says Choi. “But at the same time, the puppet acts like a human and occasionally exhibits human behavior, like getting emotional listening to music. The idea was: Lying is something a human might do. That’s why it’s part of the game.”

The Lies of P story might not be done just yet. Choi and team are working on downloadable content and a potential sequel — possibly starring another iconic character who’s briefly teased in the game’s ending. But in the meantime, the team is taking a moment to enjoy the fruits of their success. “At the beginning of development, I honestly doubted that we could even pull this off,” says Choi. “For me, the most surprising thing is that we achieved this. And that makes us think, ‘Well, maybe we could do better next time.’”

Meet the 2024 Apple Design Award winners

Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from finalists and winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.