NEOWIZ recently reminded about Lies of P. They released a film dedicated to the development of the soulslike game.
Lies of P was liked by many players: on Steam, the game received “very positive” reviews, a rating of 91% after more than 80 thousand reviews. Several years after the initial release, the developers introduced the Overture expansion, along with which they also introduced difficulty levels.
This documentary film tells how Nough Studio came to the decision to add difficulty options. During tests, which were called “game day” within the studio, developers found that experienced participants easily passed Lies of P, but many could not even get through half of it:
Initially, we asked everyone to complete the game on a fixed difficulty level. For combat system designers and more experienced players, completing it was not particularly difficult. However, those who did not have equally good mechanical skills, for the most part, did not manage to complete even half of the game before the allotted time ran out. Therefore, we added a lower difficulty level so that everyone could complete the game.
Lee Jeonghyeon, head of combat system development, noted the positive reaction to the appearance of difficulty selection:
When people started using these difficulty settings, we started getting much more positive feedback. This convinced us that adding different difficulty levels would really benefit players.