Pinnochio Bloodborne-alike Lies of P leaves a bloody trail of puppets in its first gameplay trailer

As we learned back in August, Pinnochio is Dark Souls now. Now, developer Round8 has given us a better glimpse of what that means with the first gameplay trailer for Lies of P.

In what can only be described as Pinnochio Bloodborne, Lies of P puts you in the shoes of Gepetto's stringless wooden lad. The FromSoftware flavour is evident from the jump, with booming choirs, bloody cleavers and grand, gothic streets. It's a competent riff on the Souls aesthetic too, and probably one of the closest things we'll see to a PC port of Bloodborne alongside an incredible PS1-style demake.

Despite the Bloodborne inspirations, Lies of P definitely brings a bit of its own flavour to the table. Monsters move in a unnervingly mechanical way, chopping up bodies with soulless efficiency, stumbling around on broken servos. It's creepy stuff, assuming you haven't been desensitised by a decade of Five Nights At Freddy's.

We also see P use some pretty snazzy tricks, extending a grappling hook to yank a poor sod off the roof and setting screaming puppets ablaze with flamethrowers. Still no word on whether he can parry attacks with his lying nose, mind.

Other notes don't work quite as well, particularly the shot of a body strung up with a sign reading APAB—a baffling borrowing of contemporary political language that immediately brings back memories of Deus Ex's "Augs Lives Matter".

Lies of P is set to release sometime in 2023.

Natalie Clayton
Features Producer

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.