Why Lies of P’s Piecemeal DLC Reveals Work in Its Favor

Lies of P was one of 2023’s most refreshing titles, and it was a unique entry alongside the ever-growing Soulslike genre. Basing its story and setting around Carlo Collodi’s iconic novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, Lies of P came during a particularly packed point in a loaded year for new games, yet still managed to carve its own audience. It was a critical and commercial darling and received numerous year-end award nominations and honors.

Naturally, when a game becomes as successful as Lies of P in today’s gaming landscape, players can fairly easily expect it to receive support with downloadable content in the future. In the case of Lies of P, though, developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio are still hard at work on the game’s first DLC, which has not seen a release even as the game has passed its first anniversary. In many ways, though, it’s great that the developers have chosen to piecemeal the DLC, and even though it will result in a lot of waiting, it should be worth it in the end.

Lies of P DLC Will Be Worth The Long Wait

Neowiz Gets To Polish The Lies of P DLC

Obviously, Neowiz and Round8 taking their time on Lies of P’s DLC is good news, as it allows them to polish it up and make it as good as possible. Again, Lies of P was a very well-received game in 2023, which raises expectations for the developer’s future releases. With how polished the base game was, it’s fair to expect that any follow-up reaches the original version’s level of polish.

Thus, Neowiz and Round8 are best served taking all the time they need with Lies of P’s DLC. After all, even if Neowiz is a fairly large team with over 1,000 developers, this is still a self-published indie game, meaning the team has to work on everything with no oversight and no outside publisher’s financial backing. It’s fair that Neowiz and Round8 will be protective of their game, and ensure that its DLC expansion will come out swinging just as hard as the base game.

There Are Plenty Of Soulslikes To Play Anyway

Equally, Lies of P’s DLC taking a while is not a big deal given the current state of the Soulslike market. When the game was released last year, it dropped in the middle of a particularly bloated market for new Soulslikes, with titles like Wild Hearts, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor releasing throughout the year. That number has only grown in 2024, with titles like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Black Myth: Wu Kong, alongside many Soulslike titles in the indie sphere making big noise.

Soulslike players have plenty to play at the moment, to the point where there might even be too much to play. Given that fans of the genre are spoiled for choice, it’s not like gamers will have nothing to play while Neowiz and Round8 work on new content. As a result, Lies of P’s developers have all the time in the world to cook up the first DLC expansion.

Neowiz and Round8 are best served taking all the time they need with
Lies of P
’s DLC.

The extra time spent working on this DLC could also benefit Neowiz and Round8 if the duo decides to pursue a Lies of P sequel. Many modern games use their DLC expansions as a bridge between a game and its full-blown follow-up, and Lies of P could be no different. With the extra time the teams have had, they have every opportunity to test new gameplay elements that could be expanded on in a full sequel.

With how popular Lies of P was in 2023, the developers should work to live up to the standard they’ve set with the first game. Thus, while it may feel torturous waiting for the sequel to release, it’s for the best that the teams take as long as they need. After the original game set the bar fairly high, it’ll no doubt be exciting to see how much the DLC raises that bar.