There are few truly new and unique things that I enjoy these days. Perhaps that's because there's little in the creative market that could honestly be called "new" or "unique".

In a world of re-hashes, sequels, and third-generation origin stories about 70 year old super hero, I tend to want to stick to entertainment I know I'll enjoy -- things that are nostalgic, safe, and comforting.

But, for some reason this strange and mysterious game called LISA caught my attention about a year ago. I bought it on steam and had been sitting on it until about a week ago when I really decided I was going to play it.

I wanted to share some thoughts that I've had so far because...

This is the most unique game I've ever played

The premise of the game can be summarized easily: post-appocolypse, all the worlds women are gone and humanity is reduced to degenerate, sometimes mutated men. One man, however, the main character (I hesitate to say "hero"), Brad, stumbled upon a baby girl, named "Buddy", who he has committed to raising as his daughter, until one day his band of friends is killed and she is taken. Brad sets off to retrieve her.

The game is a dark comedy, and the simple but very diverse set of characters, sound effects, and often meaningless events really set the stage for a truly unique and artful experience...

A deeply personal experience...

It's important to mention that the game was entirely created by a single developer, who goes by the name Dingaling. From playing through the first of 3 areas, I can say that my impression of Dingaling is that he is a brutally honest, deeply emotional person who deals with tremendous pain by laughing at himself and the futility of life.

On a psychological level, the game expresses a sense of complete chaos. There are too many status affects to keep track of, your main character, Brad, often kills people by accident, and there is NEVER a safe place to rest. And I mean that last part literally: every time you rest to rejuvenate your party, you are risking getting poisoned by a spider, having your party members abandon you at random or be kidnapped for ransom, waking up with wearing the mask of your protagonists gang (meaning they molested you as you slept), or having some pervert farting on your head right as you wake up.

Your party members are fantastically flawed. Many of them are deeply immoral, perverted, or psychopathic. Some of them are drug addicts, which is represented brilliantly by the "withdrawal" status ailment which happens at random and makes said character completely useless (0 damage attacks) for a long time unless they get their drug of choice.

Much of what you do is pointless or masochistic

The game is designed to make you, the player, suffer along with the characters.

At several points in the game, you are given an ultimatum: chose between the life of one of your party members or all of your items/the lives of an entire settlement of people/one of your own body parts.

It's a strange experiment of human psychology.... because these characters are not loyal. They can come and go at a whim no matter how much you've invested in them in terms of equipment, leveling up, or even personally on an emotional level.

Everyone is in this God-forsaken landscape is in it for themselves, and if at any point they have the opportunity to turn on you, they'll probably take it. So why would you care about any of them? It creates a sense of practical evaluation of life: if it's a useful character, you'll sacrifice for them; if it's not, you'll probably let them die.

Even in the Russian roulette game, which you are forced to do at least once, you MUST choose between your party members, which puts the player in an instant position to value the lives of these characters in practical terms... and it makes you feel kind of bad, because you loose these characters forever. When they die -- they're dead, and you can't get them back.

An admission of the depravity of the human being

While these choices put the player in a peculiar position that acts to dehumanize and reveal certain uncomfortable aspects of themselves, there are also many admissions of the terrible -- but also redeemable -- traits of the developer, DIngaling.

For instance, there are several characters in the game (remember, all men) who have seemed to embrace the death of their families as a kind of liberation. Many of the NPCs admitting things like "I sure am glad my wife is gone" and even one of your first party members, Nern, who admits his disgust with the appearance of his late wife, "God rest her soul."

But then... there are occasional characters who demonstrate patience and kindness. One in particular who seems to get pleasure out of the smile of a murderous mutant, who also laments it's inevitable death. There are occasional characters who express how deeply they miss their wives and children, one man saying "I miss my son so much".

These small experiences weave together a larger narrative that expresses the worldview of the developer. There is a question about what alienation and loneliness does to men. For the majority, the hopelessness of this world leads them into escape and addiction or acts of wonton cruelty, for others the pain is too much to bear and they are driven insane, some become abusers and some the abused, and for a rare few... there is an opportunity for redemption.

Redemption...

Ultimately, the driving force for Brad is redemption. He has failed everyone else in his pathetic life, and he'd rather be tortured and die than to fail Buddy, his adopted daughter. But as I play through the game, I begin to wonder if this is actually what's best.

Brad has a propensity to smother Buddy to the point that the world would never know that she exists -- if it were up to him -- for the sake of keeping her safe. This impulse stems from his incredibly abusive and traumatic childhood, one that haunts him throughout the game. And while this seems a virtuous thing to do (frequently justified by the numerous characters who openly want to rape Buddy), he is potentially dealing with the only female left to the human race... the last hope for humanity as a whole. And while, on the one hand you are disgusted by the kidnapping of Buddy, on the other hand it seems that the kidnappers may actually have nobler intentions for the whole of humanity.

This, along with the sacrifices that Brad makes in the pursuit of his goal of "rescuing" Buddy, almost gives me the feeling that it is I who is the bad guy, potentially dooming the human race to extinction in a vain attempt to medicate my own emotional pain.

I begin to question what truly is the nature of sacrifice and redemption.

Get LISA today:

http://www.lisatherpg.com

Follow me @shayne