The miserable journey of a broken man...
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Prices
Each in the currency that store quoted — not converted: the gap between two rows is the publisher's pricing, not an exchange rate.
Every market we collect.
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
About
Add-ons
Each DLC is estimated with the same model as a game, then summed — a modeled figure, not reported DLC sales.
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 871 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
[b]I was expecting this game to be absolute garbage[/b], and DiNGALiNG [u]proved me wrong[/u]. [b]LISA[/b] is [u]one of the best indie games[/u] I have ever played. The praise it gets is well deserved (╯˘ -˘ )╯ [b]LISA[/b] is split into three titles: [b]LISA: The First[/b] (available for [u]free[/u] on Steam), [b]LISA: The Painful[/b], and its DLC, [b]LISA: The Joyful[/b]. Despite the [b]absurd jokes and gags[/b], you can't ignore the [b]dark backdrop[/b] of [b]Olathe[/b]: If you explore every corner and pay attention to details, you will uncover a mature, [b]brilliantly crafted story[/b] that almost [u]feels frustrating to praise this much[/u]. Btw, you don't need to play them all, but [b]if the story engages you[/b], it's absolutely worth it! [h1]Story[/h1] It all begins in a [b]post apocalyptic[/b] world where [b]women have gone extinct[/b] and [u]only men[/u] remain: [b]Olathe[/b]. With [b]no chance of survival for humankind[/b], society has collapsed into despair. [b]Cruelty is the rule.[/b] A [b]drug[/b] known as [i]Joy[/i] has become [u]incredibly popular[/u], it numbs the pain and makes people [b]temporarily[/b] forget their misery. Our protagonist, [b]Brad Armstrong[/b], carries a dark and tragic past. Like the [b]vast majority of people[/b] in Olathe, he is addicted to [i]Joy[/i]. During one of his drug hazes, [b]Brad finds an abandoned baby[/b] (something thought impossible in this world). Against all odds, [b]the baby is a girl[/b], a rarity that could [b]doom her[/b] as much as it [b]could save humanity[/b]. Brad chooses to [b]raise her as his daughter[/b], protecting her in a world where [b]being the only woman alive[/b] is both a [b]miracle[/b] and a [b]terrifying danger[/b]. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] [b]LISA[/b] is a turn based RPG. Instead of the usual [b]isometric[/b] perspective, it's played as a [b]side scroller[/b]. The [b]combat system[/b] is surprisingly [u]tactical[/u] and fun, with [b]status effects[/b] playing a crucial role in the most intense fights. You can [b]build your party[/b] (up to 4 members) by choosing from [b]more than 30 unique characters[/b], each with their [b]own mechanics, abilities, and personality[/b]. [b]LISA[/b]'s core message is clear: [b]your choices matter[/b]. Depending on your actions, everything can change. Even [b]something as trivial[/b] as camping without a lookout can have a [u]huge impact[/u] on your run. Oh, and by the way, [b]falling off a cliff[/b] means an insta [b]Game Over[/b]. [h1]Do I recommend it?[/h1] I know the [b]graphics and controls[/b] might turn some people off, but if you enjoy [b]JRPGs[/b], dark stories, and dark humor, this game is [b]absolutely worth it[/b]. [b]The price might also be a drawback[/b], but it is often available [b][u]dirt cheap[/u][/b] in official bundle sites. If you enjoyed games like [b]Mother[/b], [b]Undertale[/b], [b]OFF[/b], or [b]Hylics[/b], you should definitely give this one a chance. [i][b]PS.[/b] I can't finish this review without mentioning [b]Rando[/b]. In a world this bleak, his presence alone leaves a [b]lasting impression[/b][/i]
Media
Related
Related
Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
This and every other Pro feature is free until October 20, 2026. A free account is all it takes.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 1.13/day in the week to Aug 3 → 2.71/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 26 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 7 places towards #1, and the 2,400 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Spanish - Latin America, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
Hours played at review time, across 874 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Finished this game many years ago, still thinks about it weekly, I try to make everyone I care about discover it, not all are willing to give it a try sadly, so here am I giving gospell to random people, if you can go through the stylised visuals, rough themes and not against soft RPG elements, go for it without hesitation. Trully a experience.
玩不下去，可能是年代太久远了，题材和设定都非常的恶俗，令人生厌，很多台词看得人生理不适。
I was really looking forward to trying out this game after hearing so much praise for it as a classic of the "RPG maker" type games. But after finishing it, I must say I was disappointed, maybe it's my fault for getting my expectations too high, but the majority of this game felt EXTREMELY tedious to the point I was wondering if it was worth finishing at all. I wish there were a mixed review option, because that is how I feel about this game. But sadly, the gameplay downsides for me are too much. To start with the positives, the story is great, it's unique and very dark, this is what I expected, and yeah, it did not disappoint. It was very sad, messed up, and made me feel bad for the characters; some of them deserve better :(.The soundtrack is great, I love the track that plays at the area crossroads. While it's not something I would listen to on my own, the OST is good, apart from one exception I did not vibe with. The dark humor can be SOMETIMES funny too, it gave me a chuckle, if the joke wasn't to waste your time, or to ruin the tone, more on that later. I like the camping events with your party members, and the random events that can happen during rest; those are cool. The art is also pretty good; it's unsettling in a good way, and some of the mutants are really creepy. Sadly, most of the actual "gameplay" in this game did not feel fun at all; the combat system is very basic, and the difficulty of the battles is highly inconsistent. In one room, you can fight an easy generic enemy, but then the next encounter can one-shot you or even perma-kill your party. You easily fall off cliffs, which is an instant game over. You can lose all your gear, lose a party member whom you grind for hours to level up, and the layouts of the cave areas are confusing. It's just tedious and not fun to me personally. The few areas with randomly appearing enemies, like the snakes, are some of the most annoying ones. The combat balance is all over the place. There's this one section where you climb up a snowy hill, and guys disguised as snowmen one-shot you with their guns, but then when you get past them to fight the boss of the area, it's an easy encounter. Then, right next door, is an enemy that snaps your neck and permanently kills your party, that jumps you out of nowhere. While I can see how some of these choices can make the world feel more "painful", personally, it did not feel fun and made me roll my eyes, as I had to reload my save again. Skill issue? Probably, but it felt too unfair sometimes for my taste. That balancing is probably intentional, as wasting your time seems to be a common "joke" played by this game, where a lot of sequences are just built to waste your time, while some of them are optional (like the dojo scrolls). You don't know what is or isn't optional while doing a first playthrough, and personally, I did not find this funny, immersive, or adding anything to the story at all. All of these frustrating moments made me confused about how I should be feeling as a player personally, maybe I just didn't "get it," but this made me upset the most. Should I be laughing? upset? sad? Feels like every second room, the game throws something else at you that completely shifts the mood. There are sequences where the game will ask you to sacrifice your party members or your own limbs, or play russian roulette with them, which is supposed to be dark and make you feel bad for killing someone, but then you also just walk into an orphanage next room, and burn a bunch of kids, which is played off as a joke?? With no way to save them. Then you get dark cutscenes/flashbacks with themes of child abuse, rape, and an abusive father. But then you are back in the next area using a bulldozer to run over civilians with a goofy OST playing off as a joke. These tonal shifts really did not feel good to me, and I feel like they hinder the overall good story of the game. I know one of the tags for this game is dark humor, but man, it felt distasteful a lot of the time. Overall, the story is great, Brad is a very unique and interesting character to follow, and the music is pretty good. But all of this is SEVERELY held back by baffling gameplay decisions and poor taste in humor that hinders the story. Personally, I do not think this is worth 20€ at full price; get this at a discount for around 10€, which is about right.
I usually write stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke reviews but I think this is genuinely one of the best and most woke roleplaying games ever made. This is an entire 12 hour metaphor for toxic masculinity and how utterly destroyed the world would be without women and the cycle of generational trauma and guilt that it causes. I can't talk about this game enough, just play it blind
这个游戏其实挺不错的，但是我不会推荐任何一个人游玩这个游戏。 如同游戏标题一样，作者真的是毫无保留的将painful这种折磨输出到玩家身上。在游戏里，无论是你的敌人还是你的队友，甚至你操控的主角，都在往你的心上扎眼，打通这游戏的感觉就像被绑架走给黑心老板打白工一样，整个流程都压得我喘不过气。想看剧情还是去云吧，玩这个的还是生活过得太顺心了
Nowhere near as difficult or punishing as I was ever led to believe. A pretty good play, though. The Painful follows a tried and true method of RPG Maker games; that being it's mostly structured as a series of semi-linear areas that are (mostly) disconnected from the plot until you have to directly confront what you're doing again and the plot continues. The actual events of the story are pretty straight-forward, and carry the game nicely enough without being overbearing or too bare-bones to be engaging. The atmosphere of the game is, I think, one of its strongest suits. While Olathe is often absurd and psychotic, the legitimate horrendousness of the world and the situation as a whole seeps through everything, and occasionally gets focus to truly drive the point home. The stellar work done on this front makes the world feel cohesive, where even the shockingly different tones of the Salvation Rangers, the Men's Hair Club, Rando's Army, and the Russian Roulette gang don't feel too far apart from each other, even if they have very different feelings in practice - to put it simply, Olathe sells itself as a world that is one, continuous instance of gallows humor by a humanity that knows or believes it is very much dead. The game's progression works to sell this too; both the characters Brad knows and Brad himself progress through the story from being antagonized by knife-wielding bandits and gangsters to becoming more important and impactful players in the world that get more and more dangerous very quickly. It's a subtle thing you may not even notice until retrospecting near the later parts of the game, but what would once be combat against one guy with a knife becomes you and a gang bodyslamming with relative ease monsters too fearsome for most people to be willing to tackle at all and sidesweeping some of the most fearsome and dominant organizations in your way. The very end of the game borders on power fantasy, but it does so in a way where that inhuman, ridiculous power is very much the *point*. On that note, of the point; I respect immensely this game's lack of pulling punches and consistency of thematics. I do not believe in very much sanctity of an 'intended message', and by that very principle I am quite fond of the painful - while I believe there are strong thematics in this game, and very much intended takeaways, the game's consistent tone and structure means there are quite a few things to take from it, and quite a few questions to ask about it with compelling answers and discussions thereof. All that being said, The Painful is not perfect. Story wise, where i have the least critiques; the direct plot and transitions of the game are frankly a bit trite. Whenever the story requires brad to be moved forwards, it knocks him out and teleports him. Buzzo's confrontations are largely arbitrary in location and scale to force impactful choices where they aren't thematically fitting or sometimes even that logically coherent. The cave sequence is unwise. That's all I'm saying about it. Mechanically, there is far more to say, sadly much of it negative: At its core, LISA is an RPGMaker game. There is no dodging the bullet without a fundamental overhaul; as far as RPGmaker combat goes, it's quite compelling, and makes the most out of its mechanics, but it is still at base that. Combat becomes repetitive by the late game, though luckily it can generally just be stepped on with a menial amount of grinding. Joy Addiction is a vapid mechanic. It does not actually require the consumption of Joy to deal with - and frankly thank *god* for it - and can be cured by resting, and in practice, essentially acts as a mechanically enforced backtrack to a resting point to be rid of it if one is attempting to run Joyless. Joy Addiction completely tanks the statistics of the characters it affects when it comes into play (which is entirely random), to an extent which I cannot say ever seriously disadvantaged me in combat. The only effect it ever actually had was to make any combat I engaged with much, much, *much* slower, often requiring multiple extra turns or at least an obnoxious number of extra inputs to beat. This was a menial annoyance most times, though the Marty Spider cave with a joy addiction on two of your characters is one of the most obnoxious experiences I've ever had. Many of this game's advertised mechanics, those being the permanent death or loss of party members, do not actually come into play often in the least - even without managing enemies much within combat (though especially so if you go out of your way), it is very feasable to do combat with every single Joy Mutant in the entire game without ever losing a party member, something which I myself did. (I lost several party members on the most dangerous mutant of the game - Blanking on his name, the mountain one - but I also lost the fight, and he got none off on my second, winning attempt.) Kidnappings are also basically a non-event, especially if you do not intentionally rest in dangerous areas (only serving to make joyless yet more annoying), and I do not believe I ever actually encountered one in my game. The only remaining gripe I can say I had is that the enforced Russian Roulette sequence is frankly unneeded and deeply annoying to me. It is RNG how lossy it is, ranging from not at all to completely wiping your party, and it adds essentially nothing to the game but to *maybe* force you to lose some party members via story event for no real narrative or gameplay payoff. Despite the name, I actually found the game quite enjoyable. We'll have to see about the DLC.
This game is literal perfection I just love it. It deserves more than my tribal and casual review but honestly I don't think I could put such perfection in words. I know its pretty renowned for its story but the game itself down to the minute details are amazing. The dialogue, character design, MUSIC, world, game play, and of course the STORY all weave together to knit this depressive but somehow also comedic game. I have laughed at it and also frowned right after its more than a roller coaster its just straight up drugs and it messes you up. I CANT STOP PLAYING IT, its my 3rd time playing both joyful and painful its addicting. This game is comparable a modern tragedy, and you get to experience it all up front. I just wish there was more but alas I am still content with my golden nugget that is this game. BUY IT NOW AND JUST PLAYYY ITTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My first playthrough in 2018 was a selfless run, where I gave up everything for my friends. Honestly I don't remember it at all. My second playthrough, this year, was a selfish run. I gave up my friends for everything. Brad becomes a killing machine. It's a total power trip. That is, until you get cocky and some twisted monster tears your favorite party member's head off. It's great. Buy it if you like JRPG type games, dark humor, and don't mind themes of sexual abuse as well as copious amounts blood & gore.
"Oh hello there! My name is Nern. I'm considered the greatest historian of our time... I've gathered a wealth of knowledge about Olathe and what happened here. Many tales... Would you like to hear? Hmm... I wish you were more enthusiastic... Oh well, I'll tell you anyway. Let's see.... Oh right! It all started with what I like to call, THE FLASH. I was sitting with my wife, god rest her soul, sipping on sweet lemon tea. I believe it was homemade by my sweet wife, God rest her soul. Or wait... Maybe she bought it from the store in a bottle. You know, like a plastic bottle? Well hold on now, that would be ridiculous to buy a bottle of sweet lemon tea, then transfer the contents into a glass. Why not just drink it from the bottle? I guess maybe so she could put ice in the glass? But then again, making tea homemade would be just as time consuming, if not more! That sneaky ♥♥♥♥♥... Anyway, I'll save that story for later! So, I'm sitting on my porch drinking sweet lemon tea. From a glass of course, ho ho! When suddenly... A great strangeness fills my body... Something was wrong... I've lived many years, and I've never felt something like this before. Do you know what it was? Yup! It was my rocking chair! That wooden son of a gun stopped rocking! So I looked down and realized a little rock had gotten caught beneath my chair! A rock under my rocking chair! What a day! I decided it was time for bed, I had had a little bit too much excitement for one day! Hoho! I slid into my jammies, brushed my teeth, and said my prayers. As I was climbing into bed I noticed my wife, God rest her soul, brushing her hair in the bathroom. As I peered across the hall my body swelled up with emotion... Why can't I be married to an attractive woman? Is it me? My bank account? I'm a tall guy, I workout forty minutes a week... Is that not enough? Now my neighbor at the time, Tom Forknight, was very short. His wife, Karen Forknight-Plateburger... Yeah, one of THOSE women. Well, she was more attractive than my wife. I'd say she was a soft six, whereas my wife was a hard four. What's the deal? I thought women liked tall men? Why was Karen with him? Anyway my horse of a wife, God rest her soul, crawled into bed next to me. She decided to leave the bedside light on so she could read her book. It was one of her romance novels again... Give me a break... As if I don't already feel inadequate enough... Not only do I have to compete with Tom, now I have to deal with these fictional hunks! Ay yai yai! At this point I had already suppressed the urges of intimacy, I rolled over and tried to sleep. Her bedside light was only of minor annoyance. I was able to drift off... Then I woke up to a big flash of light. That's about it. I can tell by the way you're walking away that you don't want to leave... If you really want to hear another story I'll tell you. Once upon a hot summer night. Sometime in July... Was it July? My local grocery store sells really good eggs in July. I don't know why. Do chickens operate better in heat? Fireworks maybe? I don't know. I don't want to get off topic. Point is, the eggs that Summer were marvelous! Anyway, my wife and I, God rest her soul, went to a BBQ that night. It was held at Dale Spooner's house. Well, his backyard... Conny Spooner doesn't want people in her home, I think she's just an uptight ♥♥♥♥♥. So at this BBQ I see none other than... That's right, Tom Forknight... Now earlier in the day my wife, God rest her soul, had made potato salad for the BBQ. Personally I hate potato salad, I'm a mashed kind of fellow. Hoho! So I sat in the TV room avoiding her till the BBQ. Once we were at the party, I made sure to distance myself from my dumb potato ♥♥♥♥♥ wife. God rest her soul, I just didn't want anyone to think I would associate with someone that would bring a potato salad! Anyway, Tom and his above mediocre wife were already there. And get this, they brought a fruit salad! With whipped cream! The nerve of those Forknights! Needless to say I gave my wife, God rest her soul, a couple choice words About whipped cream! Versus potato salad! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! A real tongue lashing! Geez, you're kind of smothering me. I'll talk to you later." ― Nern
Active players
Estimated daily and monthly active players (DAU/MAU) modeled from peak concurrency.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| $1.2M | 5.6K | 98% | $14.99 | |
| $880.1K | 5.6K | 94% | $9.99 | |
| $686K | 3.3K | 52% | $9.99 | |
| $11K | 29 | 79% | $14.99 | |
| $12.4M | 341.7K | 97% | $2.49 |
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4M | 21.8K | 90% | $6.99 | |
| $4M | 3.9K | 81% | $29.99 | |
| $4M | 7.5K | 96% | $19.99 | |
| $3.9M | 9.3K | 97% | $9.99 | |
| $3.9M | 9.4K | 90% | $19.99 | |
| $4M | 7.6K | 78% | $17.99 |