Lies of P Added Difficulty Settings After Its Own Devs Couldn't Beat It
Lies of P, the acclaimed Soulslike from Neowiz and Round8 Studio, turned out to be so punishingly difficult that even the people who made it couldn't get through it. According to a report from GamesRadar, the development team revealed that most of their own developers couldn't make it halfway through the game, a humbling discovery that ultimately led the studio to introduce difficulty settings to make the experience more accessible.
The decision paid off. The team noted they received a lot of positive feedback following the addition of the difficulty options, suggesting that a broader audience was finally able to engage with the game's dark, Pinocchio-inspired world without being gated out by its demanding combat. It's a candid admission that speaks to a growing conversation in the Soulslike genre about balancing punishing design with player accessibility, and it shows that even developers aren't immune to the brutal difficulty curves they create.
Key Insights
- 1Most of Lies of P's own developers couldn't make it halfway through the game, prompting a rethink on difficulty.
- 2The studio added difficulty settings in response to the internal struggles, a relatively rare move for the Soulslike genre.
- 3The difficulty settings were met with a lot of positive feedback from the player community.
- 4The decision reflects a broader industry conversation about accessibility in notoriously hard game genres.
- 5It's a rare case where developer self-testing directly led to a meaningful design change post-launch.
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