The surprising hit soulslike Lies of P, which many have called the best game in the genre not made by FromSoftware, has been celebrated by both fans and critics and boasts an impressive 4 million copies sold without counting Game Pass or PS Plus Players. The Bloodborne-inspired action RPG takes advantage of the public domain status of Pinocchio, featuring a wildly reimagined story in a dark steampunk world inhabited by demonic machines and Frankenstein-like abominations.
We know that developer Nough Studios (formerly Round 8), which is owned by Korean tech company Neowiz, is deep in development on the sequel to Lies of P. Many are anticipating an official announcement in the near future (perhaps at The Game Awards this year), but from the ending of Lies of P and a recent trademark filing for “Wonders of O”, we know that the game will take place in the world of The Wizard of Oz, possibly still following Pinocchio as a protagonist. Only the original Oz novels, of course – not the famous 1939 movie that Warner Brothers owns the rights to. In light of the impending announcement, I’ve picked out five other public domain properties that would serve as a great setting for a third game (or beyond!).
1. Alice in Wonderland
Proposed title: Madness of A
This is by far the easiest of the list to translate into a video game and the most obvious selection, so I’m just getting it out of the way. This adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass would be strange, twisted, and weird. In fact, there’s already precedent for this: in 2011, EA and Spicy Horse Studios released Alice: Madness Returns, an action-adventure game set in a dark and twisted version of the fairy tale. To differentiate from both the cult classic game and the Disney movie, I’d recommend having all new monsters, reimagining the Queen of Hearts as a reluctantly helpful ally, and making the four main stats Hearts (Vitality), Clubs (Attack), Spades (Defense), and Diamonds (Magic). The White Rabbit could be a summon, and the Mad Hatter is, of course, the traveling merchant selling different hats with different upgrades. The apparent final boss would likely be the Jabberwocky, but perhaps the true final boss… is the madness itself!
2. Peter Pan
Proposed Title: Dusts of T
Getting a little funkier now, this would be an adaptation not of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, which is under perpetual copyright holdings by the Great Ormond Street Hospital in many countries outside the United States. What we can adapt is J.M. Barrie’s own 1911 novelization of his play titled Peter and Wendy, which is globally in public domain. This is actually a better deal, because that means we can utilize the famous and beloved fairy Tinkerbell! I think Tink would make a great companion on the quest, giving advice and helping with wayfinding just like Gemini Cricket (not Jiminy Cricket!) in Lies of P. Perhaps there’s some sort of clock-crocodile monstrosity as a boss fight, and maybe the Native American village is a little less racist than in the Disney movie. There would need to be some mechanic where you grow older the more you die, as well.
3. The Hans Christian Andersen Cinematic Universe
Proposed Title: Fables of H
Fine, literary universe. But the prolific Danish writer has so many stories under his belt that it would be too hard to resist using them all. Andersen’s fairy tales include The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Snow Queen (Which Disney turned into Frozen), and The Ugly Duckling, just to name a few. Creating a fairy tale world of his works, with his likeness narrating the stories and weaving them together, would be a great setting for all kinds of horrific creatures. Ice golems, evil fairies, monsters of the deep sea, you name it. I’d also do this less like Kingdom Hearts with separate worlds and have the whole thing be smoothly in a single universe. The Little Mermaid is probably the most lore-heavy of these, so I’d make that story the main driving force for the narrative.
4. King Arthur & The Knights of the Round Table
Proposed Title: Knights of A
Great Britain’s most famous story would be a perfect setting for a darker and more lethal take on fairy tales. The story of King Arthur isn’t owned by anyone, due to it being around 1,500 years old, so we are free to go crazy with it. You’ve got the Lady of the Lake, who can give you your weapons such as Excalibur, King Arthur leading his court, allies like Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain, and even getting really granular with swords and armor. I think this one would be a bit of a harder sell, as the King Arthur legend doesn’t traditionally feature fantasy monsters, but pulling in classic European creatures like unicorns, dragons, pixies, sprites, and more would work very well for accenting the world. The main reason this could serve as a brand new thing is that most of the fights would be one-on-one sword and shield duels, so there needs to be a wide range of armor and weaponry with For Honor depth of swordplay. I would use the A24 film The Green Knight for aesthetic and tone inspiration.
5. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
Proposed Title: Tales of S
I have saved this one for last because it’s the absolute best idea of the bunch. This ancient Middle Eastern collection of stories combining Mesopotamian, Arabic, and Persian fables is famous around the world and has been retold and rewritten hundreds of times by different authors. It does, however, always follow the same framing device: a tyrant king, Shahriyâr, stumbles upon his wife cheating on him with the cook in their bed. He kills them both and, deciding all women are the same, orders that a virgin girl will be brought to him every night to marry him and be executed the next morning before she has a chance to cheat on him. His Vizier eventually runs through all the virgin girls in the kingdom until only his own daughter, Scheherazade, is left. Scheherazade smartly enchants the king by telling him a story that night, but not finishing it and leaving it on a cliffhanger so he cannot kill her or else never hear the next chapter. Sheherazade manages to survive for one thousand and one nights by stringing the king along this way, but each telling of the story has a different ending about how she manages to escape execution at the end.
The stories in the Thousand and One Nights range through adventure, erotica, comedies, romances, and histories. The three most well-known stories are easily Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, but there are literally hundreds more to explore. These stories contain all types of mythical creatures to turn into enemies: most notably is the djinn, which can take many forms and shapes, but also ghouls, ghosts, ape men, sorcerers, and demons of all kinds. The possibilities for filling out the world are endless. The world would build itself slowly as Scheherazade narrated it into being, a bit like Tiny Tina’s Wonderland but more serious and less erratic. I’m truly excited for the possibilities with this idea, and hope that Nough Studio follows up with this for the third entry!
Any other ideas for fairy tales they should explore? Let us know in the comments below.
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