DLCLISA: The JoyfulLoading store offers
LISA: The Painful
The unforgiving journey through Olathe makes choices and the fate of your party central to this solo RPG. 
Eneba has LISA: The Painful for $1.46, currently at the lowest price tracked on this site. Choose Painless mode for a story-focused experience, or Painful mode for extra challenge and unique enemies; either way, the consequences of your decisions are part of the appeal. At $19.99 from Eneba, LISA: The Painful is an appealing fit for a solo journey through Olathe; confirmed interface languages include Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Spanish-Latin America, Japanese, and Korean.
All-time low ~ $2.49across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
Loading store offers
Wishlist price
Set a target to receive an email when an eligible offer in your selected region is at or below that amount.
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $1.212026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $1.46Enebavs. Historical Low+21%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About LISA: The Painful
LISA: The Painful is an RPG about a relentless journey through the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Olathe. Battles, recruiting party members and brutal choices shape the trip; sacrifices can save companions but may permanently alter stats and attacks. Steam player reviews: 95%% positive from 13,169 reviews. The Steam PC version supports twelve interface languages.
Credits
Developer
Dingaling Productions
Publisher
Serenity Forge
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.212026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 9 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish-Latin America | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Play mode
The Steam PC version is single-player. Choices and sacrifices can have lasting effects on party members, stats, attacks, towns and lives.
Modes
Painful mode adds a challenge and unique enemies; Painless mode focuses on the story.
Language
Steam PC lists interface text and subtitles in twelve languages. Full audio support is not listed.
03Frequently asked questions
Where does the game take place?
The journey crosses the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Olathe.
Do choices have lasting effects?
Yes. Choices can permanently affect towns, characters and lives, while sacrifices can change stats and attacks.
Can you recruit companions?
You can recruit up to 30 party members in towns and camps.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
This is the real depression quest.Show moreShow less
29.9 hours at review825 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I put off reviewing the game for some time fearing the negative backlash I'd almost surely recieve. Nowadays it's become a bit more accepted to dislike Undertale, or simply have it be "not your thing", but giving criticism to LISA, its darker, more "mature" counterpart it's often compared to, seems to be entirely blasphemous. That said, I tried my very best to like this game. I thought I would abslolutely love its handling of serious topics, gameplay, and story. The reviews on the front page affirmed my assumption, with one in particular I recall describing the game as... "If Earthbound and Mad Max had a baby, and then David Cronenberg became that baby's abusive alcoholic stepfather." Earthbound and Mad Max, I suppose I can see. Like Earthbound, the game has some rather fun and engaging gameplay, more innocent and simplistic visuals despite a dark plot, and odd humor interlaced between the game's seemingly more serious segments. It's Mad Max in the sense of its setting and world, and that's about it. But there is nothing "Cronenberg" about this game aside from its body horror. It's missing the artistry, actual decent writing, and above all, subtlety, that makes Cronenberg so great. Here lies the biggest problem in this game, which so many others regard as being its greatest strength -- LISA's writing. Despite masquerading as something meaningful, the experience is artificial and lacks the competence to actually pose any real or unsettling questions. It hides behind its simplicity of plot behind a deep-curtain comprised of extremely out-of-place humor, and lazy absurdity. Prior to writing this review I read several interviews with the game's creator, Dingaling, and was especially hooked by and interested on a particular write-up he did regarding his process of telling stories. Seeing as I hated how he told stories, I felt it would give me insight and explaination as to how his methods succeeded so well with so many others, and not with me. Having read it, I got just what I was looking for. If you're interested in taking a look yourself, the link is below: http://dingalingboy.tumblr.com/post/129856421848/lisa-storytelling It pretty much told me what I already knew -- Dingaling is not a subtle storyteller. He tells things only as they appear to be, rather than what they imply. For many people this is enough, but for me it doesn't work. There is no right or wrong way to tell a story, but in the context of LISA, with its serious subject matters (abuse, rape, genocide, death, etc.) these kinds of subjects are just not suited to such a simple approach. This is why the game fails, and why its unfitting absurdist humor, on top of its lack of subtlety, is the nail in the coffin. Earthbound, I believe, succeeds where LISA fails. Its dark tones were a very fascinating juxtaposition to its upbeat and innocent exterior. Its off-the-wall oddball humor added to its themes, rather than muddled them. LISA is all over the place, and on a narrative level doesn't work on any front it sets out to explore.Show moreShow less
4.1 hours at review198 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I just finished Austin Jorgenson's LISA and can say that, without a doubt, it is among the strongest indie RPGs I have ever played. I was hooked on the world of LISA with the slight taste given by the prequel, LISA: The First, which had me eagerly awaiting this title. The developer cites Mother as a key influence and that shows, but even more than the abstract game OFF, LISA has taken the wacky humor and surreal style of Mother into a dark and very adult place. Dingaling is able to take simple, old school pixels and work them into truly disturbing imagery. Lately, we have been inundated with post-apocalyptic settings that are xeroxed and re-sampled at will: zombies, plague, fallout and bad weather. All of those settings, done to death, are fairly grim, but none of them can even touch the misery suggested by LISA. Here we have a world where women are extinct and the surviving men, seeing no future for humanity, have transformed the society into a sort of prison yard where hopelessness is drowned in drugs and alcohol, and memories seem uniformly sad. The main protagonist, Brad, is driven by a past filled with abuse and grief, and literally sets himself against the will of the entire world. The player will be forced to make tough decisions in this game and to eventually think about and judge the outcome. Even as we laugh at sight gags and endless pro wrestling references, one cannot ignore the uneasy slithering quality of LISA. My greatest hope is that the game does well and Dingaling games develops more titles where the heart of the game is a great story, not the ability to snipe someone in multiplayer. Bravo!Show moreShow less
35.2 hours at review652 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
UPDATE: I finished the game. They're working on patches. Things will be updated as stuff is fixed. I love the original LISA. I'm glad Austin removed those unsavory bits - they sucked and were far from his best work. This review is not about that. I am addressing some major issues that are present in this "Definitive Edition". Spoilers ahead, folks. Fights now start with a deafeningly loud noise accompanied by what I can only describe as a flashbang. Sounds in general are either way too loud or too quiet. Due to this game being made with Unity rather than RPGmaker, most of the original sound effects could not be repurposed for obvious legal reasons. The new foley and sound effects sound weak and awkward. No more church organ when you pass out for bed - just a simple rendition of the main theme. Many of the animations have been rendered extremely choppy or feature characters in awkward locations on the screen for no reason. Some animations won't even play properly, like in the Dayspa Henning fight (the sleeping guy) - he dies before the death animation plays (AN ISSUE THAT WAS FIXED IN FANGAMES MADE IN 2017). The flavor text used to communicate which player or enemy is attacking gets bugged very easily and disappears in fights with multiple enemies. Fights also end without properly dealing with the BGM or will end abruptly in the middle of combos (just like in the original). In addition, I found that interactions with shopkeepers and menus felt very sticky and unusual, like they'd hang around for slightly too long or require multiple more button presses than usual to escape. Worse yet, sometimes, they game will throw up a useless pop-up whenever you use an item to remove status effects. Want to use a cigarette to clear Poison? Better be careful - if you click through too fast, you might accidentally give Brad Joy. Some more issues. Shadowy figures have this super-fast bobbing animation that diffuses the tension of the battle altogether. Gimmicky fights like the big end of Area 1 fight against Sweet Tea Rakeem (on Pain Mode) are just as annoying as they used to be - not as a result of difficulty, but rather 500+ damage RNG. If you get unlucky, both guys can KO your entire party in one turn without warning. Damage via DOT is not displayed to the player, so it's an absolute crapshoot as to whether or not you're actually doing foes in. Let me stress that it's a bit ridiculous that a boss can have 3 DOT statuses on them at once, be attacked by all three party members and be stunlocked via Pissed and still take about 8-9 turns to kill. The AOE attacks have only one centered animation, which can catch players off-guard, as they'll see a single chop eradicate half of their team. The line "X is astounded by your stupidity" is either bugged or gone. No matter if these issues were present or not in the original, it's unacceptable that a price-hiked version labeled "The Definitive Edition" features them. The thing is, though, most of these issues WERE NOT in the original RPGmaker version, despite its numerous other points of jankiness. Let me be fair. There's a lot of new writing that blends seamlessly into the original. You receive a new guidebook that allows you to learn about all of the combat intricacies, with it even providing strategies to succeed. There are some new visual effects that look quite nice. Nern gets a brand new monologue, but god almighty, it clocks in at a consistent six plus minutes, which was far longer than any previous monologue he ever gave. I barely chuckled. That might be personal bias speaking. After much bugging, they finally restored the old TP-damage build system. I'm not going to give credit for something that was present before, but I'm glad they brought it back. Some UI and UX fixes are coming down the pipeline, apparently. I'll leave some notes on those when they arrive. Alt-Tabbing is bugged. Don't know why Steam is against me mentioning that, but alright. You still can't use bottle-items in the construction zone to get bottles for firebombs. Disable truck keys if this is an issue. It is not hard at all. They added in weird visual effects for some sequences that were fine without them. Sometimes, less is more. They added in indicators for how equips affect stats without showing the base ones. Demon X and Buzzo CAN still be fought apparently, but they've been made slightly harder and offer the player no reward (despite it being common knowledge that they can be defeated). Certain key story sequences lack music or have it cut off by random actions. The final fights on Randoland feature the "your team won" dialogue. I don't think I need to explain how that disarms the incredible tension featured at the end. While there is a well-conceived easter egg involving the dialogue after Rando's defeat, it feels wrong. The original LISA relied heavily on scripts from the RPGmaker community. Said scripts were responsible for the menu design, the general combat flow and much more. Those people are not credited, despite the developers mimicking these scripts. You have to sit through 2 awkward credit sequences with nothing in between - they might as well have condensed them into one credit sequence. I appreciate the effort that has gone into attempting to rectify the mistakes since launch. While I'm still disappointed so many things are still present/were present, devs that fix stuff and are honest about it earn my respect. They still have a lot go (in the spirit of LISA) but if they keep at it, I'll be happy to change my review to a thumbs-up. I sincerely do hope they bother to fix the last two points regarding crediting and the ending. As for the secret content - it's pretty good. Very weird (and not 100% my cup of tea due to it leaning heavily into goofy creepypasta territory) but it has charm. Just wish it didn't have to last so long and feature zero save points like Security Breach's bonus content. Overall, the new stuff is nice. Not enough to warrant a price hike in my opinion, but it's still good. Dingaling can still make some quality stuff, but a lot of my blind trust has certainly been shaken unfortunately. I had fun finding the secrets and having a reason to dive in one last time into the world of LISA (even if it hurt in some ways).Show moreShow less
182 hours at review134 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
A tale of a broken man in a land of perverts and Joy. Crude,Rude, and lewd. Lisa stars a man who's been broken for many years, incapable of forgiven himself for the loss of his sister long ago, both beaten and abused by their father. Brad Armstrong grew up protecting his friends and teaching karate in his dojo. Envied by his friends, hated by his father and deeply traumatized by the loss of his sister Lisa Armstrong he soon resorted to painkillers to forget and wipe away his regrets. The world erased in a white flash, everything changed and everything destroyed. Mankind had its females seemingly removed from existance and the world crumbled into a inhospitable place, mutants, gangs, perverts, murderers and psychopaths rule the world now. In the middle of this is Brad who'd become addicted to Joy a new drug in this destroyed world now using it to kill his past. One day when taking a hit of Joy a baby all of a sudden appears in his arms, not only that but a female one. Brad taking this child to his friends rejects the idea of giving her up for a better living to the local gang leader Rando, Instead he sees this child, now named Buddy as a secound chance. As his daughter or maybe just a means to put his past to rest. Wether its either is up to the player since not all of the cards are on the table. The only thing known is that you will suffer and your actions will cause suffering. All in all Lisa is a strong RPG, the roster is amazing, the story is blank enough to allow speculation. The soundtrack is unique and amazing. The art style is off the walls and the whole world is a perverted joke and will have you cringing and creeped out by its warpedness. The game is a clear shoutout to Mother and Earthbound and Mad Max so old school gamers and RPG lovers with adore this game. However due to its limited side scrolling the map can be confusing at times, cliffs can easily be jumped off of to your death, bugs and glitches do occur, enemies can permanantly kill allies and the amount of status effects can be confusing. Its probably one of my most favorite games on steam right now and in existance, The story made me feel for Brad and Buddy aswell as making me feel the weight of losing an arm or a party member to one bad move or choice on my part. You will feel hurt playing this but in the end the game does what it wanted to, to make you feel. Honestly whats a good game? One that makes you feel for what its created. Wether you on purposely play as a selfesh person or a selfless one, or something in between you will feel like you made a impact in this broken and beautifull world.Show moreShow less
56.4 hours at review580 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Please, listen to me - I love this game. It had a huge impact on my life: the first time I played this game on my old laptop was when I was in the hospital with suspected cancer. The game influenced my musical tastes, my attitude towards life and the idea that video games are also art. But this "remaster"... damn. I will say right away that I am sure that the content that Dingaling has made is great as always. And apparently the Definitive Edition was made because of financial problems or something like that. I hope so. After all, let's go in order: - Bugs. In the original game, I also came across them a couple of times, but here the game is full of them from the very start. Audio issues, softlock when talking to Nern, shows the interface as if I'm playing with a gamepad (it's not connected). - Censorship. You can tell me anything - that I'm a crybaby, that I was offended by the removal of racist jokes, or that I'm a racist or something like that. I do not care. I am for the original vision of the author. It's one thing - it's Playstation, which have their own clown censorship rules, another thing - to remove content that was almost 10 years old and did not bother anyone. Just... why? Because console players and new audiences would not understand them that way? Let's say. But we play on PC, and here in 9 years no one has had problems with this. Why now? - "Work Harder". Okay, let's say Sega or Deep Silver (whatever) could sue for using sounds from the game. But then again - the game has been around here on Steam for like 9 years now - and no one has had a problem with it either. With all due respect, the new version just sounds DISGUSTING. If this version is also on vinyl, then, perhaps, I will refrain from buying it. - Translation. It simply does not exist, although it was promised at release. Maybe instead of censoring jokes, you should, I don't know... work on the game? - No Steam Deck support on release. Most likely, some problems (censorship and soundtrack) will not affect new players. But as ironic as it sounds, I have to move towards NEW content, keeping in mind that the old content has been CUT. The only thanks - for giving the opportunity to play the old version. What a shame.Show moreShow less
15.6 hours at review130 people found this helpful
Received for free
RecommendedSteam player
Degenerate men doing nothing with their lives in a world devoid of women. A relateable world for the majority of Steam's player baseShow moreShow less
32.3 hours at review566 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
!!!WARNING!!! !!!SPOILERS!!! !!!WARNING!!! (Tags are around the big things, but there are still minor spoilers throughout) Dear lord, where do I begin?? Aesthetics-wise LISA (all caps because this game is ART) is pretty much a sidescrolling, edgier, blander, less-interesting Mother 3. Environments range from a brown mountainous area with ropes and doors everywhere to a yellow desert area with ropes and doors everywhere. There are even caves! Enemy variety is appallingly low; nearly every enemy you fight is a human with a knife and boss encounters range from "two tall guys" to "several yakuza members". Even the hidden superboss that you can only fight on secret hardcore difficulty is some random truck driver. The mutant enemies that you encounter (of which there are around 5 total whoopie) honestly could have been interesting but they have no real bearing on the plot and nobody ingame seems to acknowledge their existence (just another facet of LISA's deep story...). Atmosphere deserves a special mention because there is none. The Mother 3-styled graphics and samey sprites completely detract from any sort of emotions I am supposed to feel when I play this game. Really, that's all it felt like: a video game. I am playing a video game, I am going from point A to point B, I am fighting the boss, I have defeated the boss. The final boss of LISA is pretty much The Masked Man fight but without any sort of emotion behind it because the character you're fighting has only been onscreen for maybe 5 minutes tops. I said a similar thing with Shovel Knight: it really seems like the dev wanted to make a game like Mother 3 but completely failed on the execution. When it comes to gameplay battles are standard RPGMaker fare, but this time with a premium price tag. In terms of party members the dev opted for quantity over quality; you will find many party members, all of whom possess little to no backstory. LISA features such endearing characters as "fly man who lives in garbage town", "man who talks a lot", "guy who loves chickens", "man with tiger head", and "fish lawyer". Outside of the 1-2 minute sequence where you recruit a character, you will hear nothing out of them. With this in mind, we come to the gameplay element that makes LISA a mature video game for adult gamers: THE CHOICES!!! In LISA, just like in real life, YOUR CHOICES MATTER! At various points throughout the game you are forced to make a decision, often involving the life of a party member. Of course, since a normal person has zero attachment to any of these characters the choice just comes down to whether the party member in question is useful or not. One of the goofiest moments of the game has you forced to choose between cutting off a girl's nipple or having your entire party killed off. You don't really care about the girl so of course any sensible person is just going to instantly choose the former option. In every single one of these SuPeR dEeP mOrAl DiLeMmAs it's basically a choice between an option that would make the game more difficult, and one that I guess is supposed to guilt you but ultimately has no effect on the outcome of the game. Oh no, my character lost an arm but he's pretty much the same as he was when he still had both of them! I honestly don't even remember what the other option was there; it was probably killing off one of your dudes. The Russian Roulette segment is pretty goofy too; you can either just expend the party members you aren't using or savescum your way out of it. Really the whole permanent death thing is pretty poorly-implemented; the mutant enemies have an attack they like to use that permanently decommissions a member of your party which basically just means it's time to reset and hope he doesn't use it next time. An excellent mechanic! However, this isn't to say that the game is difficult; as I mentioned earlier the enemies are all pretty much identical, not just in appearance but also in battle tactics! I legitimately had trouble figuring out when I was fighting a boss because every enemy just seemed the same to me. It doesn't help that everything is weak to status effects, meaning that Fly Guy can puke on an enemy and stop them from doing anything until they die. Bland graphics, poor gameplay, choices that don't matter... a game can have all of these and if its plot is decent I can just pretend I'm reading a book and be happy. Unfortunately the story is pretty much just "Bald man addicted to not-meth has to go find his adopted daughter; hijinks ensue!" which would honestly be okay if the characterization was good... or the environments were interesting... or if the writing was half-decent... or if the game was fun to play... Oh no the daughter is rebellious!! Oh no Bradley turns into a mutant man at the end! There are attempts to flesh out a backstory for our main character and his dark past as a karate instructor for first graders but in the end I could not find myself caring for him at all, or for any of the one-dimensional characters in this game. This game tries to be quirky, it tries to be deep, it tries to be emotionally stimulating, and in all of these regards it fails. Even at this point I would forgive the dev with a pat on the shoulder and a "better luck next time" but there are actually GOOD games made with RPGMaker out there that don't cost money to play. Maybe "good" is an overstatement, but similar games such as Space Funeral and Off! (meme game that it is) actually manage to do one or two things right. So just play those instead. Taster's score: C-Show moreShow less
12.8 hours at review118 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
You're tearing me apart LISA.Show moreShow less
18.5 hours at review509 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This game opens with a beautiful, haunting introductory sequence, making excellent use of the fantastic soundtrack and sparse use of dialogue, while somehow wringing genuinely cinematic storytelling out of its very basic visuals and the simplistic tools available in the RPG Maker platform. Said sequence economically and sensitively relates the backstory of our protagonist Brad, a man who suffered traumatic abuse earlier in life and now battles a drug addiction while raising an adopted daughter in a post apocalyptic hellscape. So after the first half hour or so I was on board for a game which maturely deals with tough issues, while using gentle humour to endear you to the cast of characters. Then an hour or so later you meet a comic relief character whose hilarious schtick is... he's a multiple rape victim. This schizophrenia of tone in the way it deals with issues is so prevalent it must be intentional. In one scene you're forced to decide between sacrificing a friend or one of your arms, with some heavy-handed dialogue about how your choice says a lot about you as a person, so I sacrificed the arm... then you're forced into an unskippable Russian roulette sequence where your friend dies anyway, and THEN you're treated to a motorcycle riding sequence where you unavoidably commit a number of vehicular homicides, all played for laughs. In another instance your character has a flashback to his childhood trauma, right before an utterly pointless scene in which the game makes you "accidentally" immolate five children, totally played for laughs. I'm utterly mystified as to what the intent or message of this total tonal whiplash mode of storytelling, maybe it's just 3 edgy 5 me and I need to go hide in my "safe space", but to me the experience was like if the schoolyard bully started sucking some dude's ♥♥♥♥ in front of you while saying "This is my impression of you dude, this is how gay you are." What I'm saying is, you can't have it both ways: be the deep mature game about trauma, or be zany nihilistic murder romp. You can't suck the ♥♥♥♥ and call everyone else gay too.Show moreShow less
3.3 hours at review100 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.