Abuse is a rough subject matter. How do we address such a terrible feeling without going into the wrong territories? Understand the torment a person has gone through and sympathize with them. The thing about abuse is that you can know surface level information about the subject, but not actually know what a person going through it is mentally at. A person who was physically beaten as a child will have a different mindset compared to a person who was verbally abused, sexually abused, etc. You can attempt to help the victim out, but if you don’t know the specifics that went on during their abuse or offer them a simple yet unhelpful answer then the problem won’t fully be solved. Then you have the people who do get help, but the scars of the past still weigh down on their shoulders and they never fully heal. That’s why addressing abuse is often pretty difficult for me. I tried talking about it in a character analysis I wrote on Therion from Octopath Traveler a while back, but that was more about learning to move on rather than the pain of abuse. I don’t think I ever played a game that delved into the mental state of abuse. I could say Persona 5, but for a game that handles a lot of mature topics it too goes over surface level stuff. Never played a game that went deep into abuse, until recently. I present to you all Lisa: The Painful.
The game was developed by solo indie developer Austin Jorgensen and was made using the well known RPG Maker engine. An easy to use toolkit that allows you to create simple to play pixel RPGs. The Painful was not Jorgensen’s first game though. Two years prior to Painful, Jorgensen made the first Lisa game which was simply named Lisa. A simple exploration game where you explored the imaginary world set up by Lisa, the main protagonist. It wasn’t a long game, but the dark message it hinted towards overtime was what made it standout. A girl being sexually abused by her father and soon resorting to suicide to escape the scenario she’s trapped in week by week. It was so shocking, but at the same time it had one of the more realistic depictions of abuse in a game. How you can’t truly escape and the thought of it floods your mind. Taking place and never letting go. The only real problem with the original Lisa is that it felt like there should have been more, and that’s what Jorgensen went to work on as he soon opened up a Kickstarter campaign to help fund a full game. An RPG that would follow the original, now dubbed Lisa: The First. This new game was Lisa: The Painful and would follow the sibling of Lisa and the trauma he has to overcome ever since his sibling committed suicide. It took place in an apocalyptic setting and followed a scenario where the human race was slowly becoming extinct. Lisa: The Painful was more of an actual RPG, but its dive into the mindset caused by abuse was still there.
It told an effective narrative about a man trying not to become his abuser. How being offered the chance to raise his own daughter would redeem him of not being to prevent his sister’s suicide all those years ago. How despite all his effort he wasn’t able to overcome his trauma and turned into another monster with different aspects. He became a terrible person by the end of the story, but it’s one of those scenarios where you don’t hate him. You understand why he became what he is. Unfortunately not a lot of critics loved Lisa: The Painful nor did a lot of people play it. Probably because of the depressing tone and setting of the game, or how it utilized RPG Maker. An easy engine to create games with, but it does have its limitations. Lisa: The Painful received decent review scores during its release, but a cult soon began to follow. Praising the game for what it did and having the balls to fully explore abuse. You even had fan games being made, and the official creator Jorgensen approved these games and said they were canonical to the universe. Painful is depressingly great, and I want to talk about why it deserves the praise. How it ended up winning me over despite the shortcomings.
Story
We follow Bradley Armstrong, son of Marty Armstrong and brother of Lisa. His father became an abusive alcoholic after their mother left and vented his rage onto his children. Physically and verbally Brad, and sexually abusing Lisa. The two children had no one they could go to for help, and had to deal with this torture until adulthood. Brad managed to contain all the sadness within him, but Lisa on the other hand couldn’t handle it any longer. Eventually committing suicide out of nowhere. A funeral was held and Brad had to live with the guilt ever since. Knowing he could have prevented it if he knew ahead. The signs were there and he got to witness, but he wished he could have done more. Years pass and a cataclysmic event occurs that endangers the human race. Known as The Flash, it disrupted all life on earth. Water evaporated into nothingness, plantlife was burnt to sand, buildings crumbled, and a majority of the human population was wiped out. It’s mainly women that are taken during the Flash and all that was left were men. Desperation is on the rise as the human race approaches extinction, and gangs with misogynistic ideologies are formed to survive the apocalypse. The need for women is high for repopulation, but all hope seems lost as there are none to be found. It's to be killed or be killed in the worst way possible.
Brad, now a full grown man, lives in a small hut with his three depressed friends. Doing the best they can to survive the dry wasteland. Brad is one day out scavenging for supplies until he finds a baby lying out in the open. He checks on the baby to see if it’s unharmed, but upon inspection he finds it’s a girl. The first female to be found among the women deprived apocalypse. He tells his friends about his discovery, and they tell Brad to give the female child to the nearby warlord. Hope has been found for mankind and by giving her to an all powerful ruler they can be given better positions in life. Food, water, luxury, and a comfy place to live. However, Brad decides to keep the child. Raise it as his own and teach her how to enjoy life despite the sh*tty world they now live in. This is his second chance. A way to redeem himself for not saving Lisa all those years ago.He’ll keep her away from the abuse and rape in the world, and attempt to not become the terrible father he had to deal with. He was going to be better. He was going to become a good person. Buddy grows up to be a young girl and along the way Brad does what he has to do. Care, provide, and remain calm. Sadly, Brad gets hooked on a drug named Joy and he needs to take it to not see hallucinations of his abusive childhood and overcome his past trauma. This drug does occasionally make him lash out at Buddy and prevent her from going outside, but he realizes the effects of the drug and tries to get off it. This causes the hallucinations to come back…
Brad wakes up to find himself sleeping in junk and makes his way back home. He finds the place covered in blood and bodies, and that Buddy has been kidnapped by a nearby gang. This forces him to go on an epic adventure to find Buddy, save her, and return her home before any of the gangs or horny men ravaging outside can lay a hand on her. All the while accumulating a party of weird strangers to assist him in battle.
Gameplay
The Painful is an RPG Maker game, but what separates it from the RPG Maker titles I’ve played is that it’s 2D rather than the top down perspective Omori or Hylics would provide. Exploration and navigation functions like a physics sidescroller, but it maintains the core elements that make a good RPG. Expansive world, tons of secrets to be discovered, NPCs and questlines to interact with, and dozens of baddies to fight along your journey. Besides the bats in dark caves, none of the fights in the world are random encounters or are scripted events. Every NPC you duke it out with is not just another bland face, but a guy living in the world. Someone with their own name and personality. A nice little touch as you go on to take more lives and become a monster. A few areas cannot be accessed instantly and will require upgrades or certain items to access them. One of the major items is a bike which allows you to jump gaps, not take as much damage when you fall from certain heights, and allows you to cover more ground in a shorter period of time. To get to higher areas you can pull yourself up ledges and jump onto them, but this only works when the piece of ground is right above you. Each new area you enter has multiple caves and pathways for you to venture down.
The combat is pretty fun. It’s turn-based and if you and all your party members get knocked out it’s game over, but there’s a couple features that make the combat of Lisa unique. All the weirdos you pick up across your journey are unique, have different tradeoffs, and offer a variety of party builds to form. Whether that be complete powerhouses, characters focused on playing safely, to heal and buff the entire party, or inflict status ailments on enemies. Some characters will use SP to perform skills and when SP is completely out it’ll have to be refilled, but then you have guys who use TP. The way you obtain TP is interesting as it’s either built up overtime, you get it from taking damage, or you have to keep hitting enemies to get more. I like this because it puts a limit on how much you can spam your skills or forces you to use other abilities to perform stronger ones. Then you have Brad, who is by far the most special character. Besides a couple other guys like Rage, all of Brad's attacks can be typed using certain keys on the keyboard. Inputting certain key combinations will allow Brad to perform powerful moves and some moves are really useful in weakening opponents. However, there is a tradeoff to Brad’s strength. He’s trying to get over his Joy addiction and occasionally while traveling you will withdraw. An affliction that makes all his physical attacks deal zero damage and can only be lifted by either resting or taking Joy.
Do you take care of withdrawal in a natural sense or continue to fuel your addiction? This is one of numerous choices Lisa presents you, and this is a game full of choices. Affecting the player from both a narrative and gameplay stance. You can choose to sleep at Inns which cost Mags, the main currency of the game, or you can choose to rest at campfires which are scattered across the world and sometimes more convenient to rest at as they may be closer to where you need to be. However, resting at a bonfire is risky as sometimes men will try to ambush you, items in your inventory may get stolen, creepy events happen, or one of your party members will get captured by an area gang. Then you have to locate the gang and pay them certain items to get your guy back. Refuse to do so and that party member dies. There’s a difference between getting knocked out and death. When a guy dies in Lisa they die for good. Gone for the rest of your playthrough unless you load up a save. Sometimes your party members will leave in the middle of the night. This only happens when you build a distrustful bond with your party, which happens when you constantly put their life on the line. Russian Roulette is a minigame presented to the player once they reach Area 2, and they can obtain a ton of Mags if they win. However, if a party member loses they die. Meaning you bet on a bunch of guys you don’t use or guys with a high luck stat.
Then you have narrative related choices. Occasionally in between areas you’ll get ambushed by this gang leader named Buzzo and he wants one of several precious belongings you have. Will you sacrifice all the items in your inventory, party members, or one of your arms? Sacrificing your party members will build up distrust much like betting them on Russian Roulette, but at the same time there are consequences to slicing off a limb. When you have one of your arms sliced off in Lisa you lose quite a few points in your strength and defense stats. You lose a couple skills you could have used during combat, and the chance of being inflicted with Joy withdrawal while exploring is increased. You can choose the difficulty of your journey and what will drag you down. Besides that there isn’t much else I can say about Lisa: The Painful. Beat up dudes, level up, gain new skills, have crazy encounters, and get closer to saving Buddy. Fulfill your goals and you will redeem yourself. Prove that what you are doing is worth it.
Thoughts
Lisa is great in all the right ways. Its gameplay is well designed despite the limitations of RPG Maker, but what I ended up sticking around for is the main story. Its story and message are so powerful that without it the gameplay and some of the harsh choices you make wouldn’t be as effective. It would probably just be another generic RPG Maker title with nothing else going for it. The game starts off with Brad just being treated like trash. His childhood is awful, the desert of a world is hopeless, and life is obviously not going to get better for him. We feel bad for him and then we witness him get a hold of Buddy. This is the moment for him to undo everything that weighed him down in the past and redeem himself. He sees Buddy as another Lisa, and he won’t let what happened to Lisa happen to Buddy. We see him go on this adventure to find Buddy, but as tension rises Brad is forced into a lot of daring decisions. The more Buddy is taken away from Brad the more he gets aggressive. Wanting to save his adoptive daughter from the corruption in the world. I think the apocalypse Brad is trapped in adds to his trauma. Women have been taken from the world and when men are deprived of what it is actually like to interact with a female they tend to get, how do I say it, a bit crazy? He knows what these men will do to Buddy and the many horrifying things she’ll have to go through. He wants to prevent this. He wants to save her.
Brad kills dozens of people during his adventure. He murders entire gangs and beats them to a pulp to get what he needs. It’s kind of understandable why your party members will leave you if you do the wrong things, because they are witnessing Brad transform into a monster or the awful things he’ll put them through. Buddy herself becomes distasteful of Brad, and soon we learn the ultimate twist. Spoiler alerts for anyone who hasn’t played the game. Skip to the next section if you don’t want to know. Turns out Buddy wasn’t actually kidnapped. She ran away from home because she couldn’t take anymore of Brad’s neglect. Brad wasn’t physically or sexually abusive with Buddy, but in his fear of becoming his father he was verbally abusive and did whatever he could to keep Buddy in his range. He put restraints on her and Buddy didn’t want him to be so controlling of her life anymore. Brad continues to hurt more people in front of Buddy, and this eventually turns Buddy to the side of the enemy. The people Brad didn’t want Buddy to be taken by. He becomes a monster and keeps pushing onward hoping when he does save Buddy it’ll all be worth it. His life, his effort, his fighting power will be worth it, but it isn’t in the end. This likable character we saw at the beginning has become a terrible person, but we understand why he did it. His views are justifiable, but what he does is not redeemable in the slightest. Abuse created more abuse, and that’s the main message of Lisa. The cycle never truly ends.
I really liked the main narrative of this game. A good chunk of the time the game tries to throw humor at you in a depressing setting, but when it delves into those mature themes it’s done rather effectively. Not saying that humor is bad. I laughed at a good chunk of the jokes and there’s a bit of edginess to them. Not so edgy to the point it’s unlikable. it's dark humor done well. Combat is pretty balanced and there was never a point where I was truly struggling with a boss. Yet again, I was playing on normal mode rather than pain mode which is on a whole different level. I will say though there’s a quantity over quality problem when it comes to party members. Most of them are useful, but you won’t use all of them and none of them really emotionally attach to you like a lot of other RPGs. I’d say stick to who you level up the most or have the most useful skills. I say the combat is balanced, but fire is extremely overpowered. You can make fire bombs using gas and bottles, and gas is hard to come by which is fair, but you get a party member later who spits gas and Brad has the ability to shoot fireballs. Which is a really deadly combination. I like the world design and how the game never gives you direction on where to go to progress. The many choices they present to you are clever and got me to think on what was the best for me.
Overall I really loved Lisa: The Painful. My only real complaints are that the music isn’t great, the pixel art isn’t fantastic either, and I wish I didn’t have to open up a menu everytime I wanted to get on my bike. However, we have to remember this is a solo indie developer and he’s trying to make the most of what he has. I strongly recommend this game and hope what you experience with this game is a truly meaningful message. In the end I am going to give Lisa: The Painful a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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