LiEat

Unlike most publishers whose games I've played before, I never know if I'm getting a good game when playing something from Playism. I think they exclusively publish Japanese indie games, so there's a lot of RPGMaker stuff and JRPGs. I played through one by the name of LiEat today. Seems to be this particular developer's most successful release, despite later releasing two more story games of similar size. (The later releases also did really well for indie games, but just not as massively well as LiEat.) But I'll get around to those some other time. This post is about LiEat.

LiEat is an RPGMaker game about a travelling liar and a little dragon girl (named Efina) who eats lies. The game part isn't really important, despite there being some combat, and I'd go as far as to say it's quite badly made, even for RPGMaker story game standards. The story is told as three smaller stories about the duo solving some mystery or problem in a village, a resort, and a mansion. The maps are small, each story takes an hour or two, and there's about 8 characters in each, 4 of whom repeat. Apart from uncovering the mystery of that particular place, each story also uncovers a piece of information about our main duo. The stories weren't bad. They were enjoyable to read through and didn't drag on due to their short length, but they were also nothing particularly memorable.
I think the main selling point was how darn cute Efina was. Both in the conversation dynamics between the characters, as well as the artstyle (not the pixel art), which looked somewhat amateurish, almost like crayon drawings by children, but all the more fitting for it. Personally, I also found the music to be much to my liking.

Now, as a whole, I don't really know what to say. I definitely liked the story, and found it was 4 hours well spent. But the stories weren't that good, there were some plot holes like Efina's power to make lies manifest being a bit arbitrary and made to suit the plot, and you had to run around far too much, checking every place again and again, as new discoverable items and ways to progress the story plopped up as you found the last. It was a bit of an annoyance. I think I'd give it like a half-recommendation. Play it if you like cute little anime dragon girls with a small side of actual story and mysteries, but steer clear if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea. For me, it just barely won't be making it into my best games list.