Why it matters
It brings clockwork automata, Belle Epoque city design, plague horror and Pinocchio mythology into a major contemporary steampunk-adjacent action RPG.
Lies of P reimagines Pinocchio as a gothic action RPG full of puppet automata, plague and clockwork violence, which is a brisk way of making childhood literature file a complaint.
Developed by Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio and released in 2023, Lies of P turns Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio material into a dark action RPG set in Krat, a city ruined by puppet rebellion and disease. The result is gothic, mechanical and theatrical: a city of elegant surfaces, broken automata and moral choices sharpened into blades.
The automata are the obvious steampunk connection. Puppet machines fill the city, not as charming toys but as workers, soldiers, performers and threats. They give Krat its clockwork identity. Steampunk has long loved the automaton as servant, mirror and anxiety. Lies of P makes that anxiety walk directly toward the player with a weapon.
The Belle Epoque flavour gives the game a different feel from Victorian London steampunk. Krat is ornate, continental, decadent and sick. Its machinery belongs to theatres, hotels, workshops and streets rather than factories alone. That makes the setting feel like a city where culture and technology collapsed together, each one dragging the other down the staircase.
The Pinocchio source is more than a novelty. A story about a created boy, lies, identity and humanity already sits close to automaton fiction. Lies of P darkens those questions: what makes a puppet human, what makes a human monstrous, and whether truth is always the best tool in a city that has lost its mind. The old fairy tale becomes a machine for gothic ethics.
Its plague-city material links it loosely to Dishonored, though the mood and mechanics differ. Both games use disease, class, architecture and unnatural technology to make the city feel morally infected. Lies of P is more focused on combat and personal transformation, but it shares that sense that a city's machines reveal its sins.
The weapon and upgrade systems also matter. P's body and tools can be altered, making machinery part of identity rather than simple equipment. This is one of the richest steampunk motifs: the body as workshop, the self as assemblage. In Lies of P, becoming more capable often means becoming more visibly constructed.
As a contemporary entry, it shows how steampunk-adjacent design continues to thrive in high-profile games outside the old British-American-Japanese triangle. A South Korean studio reworks Italian source material through European gothic clockwork and action RPG systems. That international mixture is exactly what the Global Steam Age looks like.
Is it really steampunk?
Adjacent, but strongly. Lies of P is clockwork gothic action rather than core steam-industrial fiction, but its automata, plague city, mechanical body motifs and Belle Epoque machinery make it highly relevant.
It suits players who like puppet horror, elegant ruins and the suspicion that every workshop should have been closed much earlier.
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