"I only know what I've seen."
Do you believe in... SIN? Can you even comprehend such a thing?
LISA: The Pointless is a fan-made Interquel to LISA: The Painful by Lithuanian developer Edvinas Kandrotas.
You play as Alex Churchland, a failed martial artist and former garbage man. Alex has been been beaten half to death for unknown reasons and left to die on Garbage Island, a landfill featured briefly in the original game. He is rescued by a man named Joel, an amiable scavenger looking for a specially-made bullet for his ancestral pistol. Upon finding said bullet near where Alex was lying, Joel nurses Alex back to health and agrees to accompany him on his travels. From there, Alex resolves to get off of Garbage Island and find a place where he can live a life free of trash and violence. They're enticed by rumors of "the city," a semi-legendary utopia out in the wastes of Olathe. In their quest to find it, the duo are hounded by Garbage Island's surlier residents, the Infinity Franchise, and the usual thugs and perverts endemic to Olathe. With little to their names but the rags on their backs, a single bullet, and whatever meager supplies they can get their hands on, Alex and Joel have a long road ahead of them...
The gameplay is mostly the same as that of The Painful, although there are a few notable changes. The difficulty is significantly ramped up, with save points being less common, items being in shorter supply, and enemies hitting much harder than before. It's imperative that you carefully manage your items as well as Alex and Joel's abilities. Even the most basic enemies are capable of killing the duo if you're not operating at the top of your game.
You can download the game here
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This game contains examples of:
- A Handful for an Eye: There are certain enemies who can kick dirt into Alex or Joel's eyes to make them start crying, reducing their accuracy.
- All for Nothing: The game's central theme is futility, so this comes into play frequently.
- The overarching debate is whether or not searching for sanctuary in a Crapsack World is worthwhile and meaningful, or if it’s pointless, suicidal, and any hope for something better will simply lead to disappointment and despair.
- Alex has dedicated the majority of his life to martial arts, including devising his own style called Velvet-Fu. When he finally gets into a martial arts tournament, he suffers a humiliating loss in the first round and gives up on his dream of being a famous martial artist.
- This theme is reflected by the groups that Alex and Joel encounter. The communion of cellophane try to find meaning and purpose within the garbage that surrounds them, while the Infinity Franchise resign themselves to violent nihilism and indulge in whatever urges and desires they have.
- All There in the Manual: Supplementary lore about the setting, like the Central Powers and their Game, as well as the names of most NPCs that aren’t fought or tell you their names, like the TV host’s real name, have been divulged by the developers throughout posts on social media, with the wiki recording them for reference.
- Ammunition Conservation: Taken to a logical extreme — Joel has one bullet that's compatible with his pistol, and he spent a lot of time scavenging Garbage Island before he found it, so naturally he won't actually be firing it anytime soon. Most of his combat skills consist of bluffing foes into believing he's able and willing to shoot them.
- Anti-Frustration Feature: Unlike LISA: The Painful, any KO'd party members will still get EXP after battle.
- All of the Save Crows can only be used one time, and are also automatically activated through various means. To counteract this, a new item in the form of the baby crows are introduced in this game, which function as a consumeable save point.
- To complete the trash humping sidequest, you have to backtrack from the Rag Maggots all the way back to Larry Davis. After doing so, Georgy gets frustrated and drags the party back to the Rag Maggot area, saving you the trouble of walking all the way back.
- Roland is a beef-gate boss who can quickly annihilate an unprepared player. Thankfully, a side quest exists that can not only result in the party being revived, but reduce Roland's stats to make it more feasible.
- Downtown Olathe presents a jump in difficulty, with many, many tough fights. However, there are two enemies that are incapable of attacking you (Luca Bariga will heal you each turn for four mags, and Twisty will only use status effects). Since both fights give no items or mags and almost no EXP, you can use them to recharge Alex and Joel's SP between tough fights.
- The rotten fruit on Garbage Island. You can gather an unlimited supply* of them to fully heal your party. The bad news? They inflict poison and could even inflict deep poison. The good news? You are provided three cigarettes to cure those side effects.tip
- Arc Villain: Roland von Buckingham serves as this for the Garbage Island section.
- Art Evolution: The sprites are more detailed than in the original game and are generally drawn better as well. There are far fewer pallete-swaps of preexisting sprites for enemies, which makes the characters you come across feel more distinct and memorable.
- Art Shift: Aside from the upgraded sprites and backgrounds, the TV show Alex watches in an abandoned house is very detailed.
- Artifact Title: Despite the game having Lisa in the title none of the main characters knew Lisa nor is her story involved in any of the characters backstories.
- Bait-and-Switch: A skateboard is set up to be the game's equivalent of the bicycle in the original. Using it in the menu just causes Alex to slip and fall. The guy who asked you to get it for him amusingly can't use it either.
- One of the more even-headed warlords at the dinner scene, Office Ottoman, has an extended conversation with Alex and Joel about their lives and motivations. It seems like he's about to join them as a third companion (and even expresses a wish to do so) only for him to get knifed in the back by Shef after the lights have gone off.
- Big Bad: Not a single individual, but the entirety of the Infinity Franchise and its ideology of killing for killing's sake. There's no actual leadership (besides the possibly hallucinatory clerk) and even the powerful Arnold Sphitz presents himself as Just the First Citizen instead of a stronger soldier.
- Body Horror: A couple joy mutants can be fought and they're just as twisted-looking as before. Additionally, Arnold Sphitz goes through a transformation in the second phase of his fight, where he gains a bunch of new arms and heads. He turns back to normal (albeit dying) for the third form, but...
- Bookends: Both the beginning and ending of the game involve Alex being taken somewhere while bleeding to death on a vehicle.
- But Thou Must!:
- In a strange roundabout way. One barter item allows to you get either a rare gummy worm or a mystery key. Late in the first part of the game, you finally find the door the key goes to. The prize is a rare gummy worm.
- An unfortunate one. Alex is doomed to lose the martial arts tournament, either due to simply being bested or getting himself disqualified with a cheap kick.
- Chekhov's Gun: Doubly subverted. The Pink Pill saves Alex from dying near the end of the game...then you learn the pill wasn't used at all at the actual end. But then the pill is traded as bus fare, letting Alex and Joel on the bus.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Right at the beginning of the desert segment, you can see a gloved man watching Alex from a cliff. If you walk away and then return, the man will be gone and you'll find the corpse of the NPC who warned Alex against trekking through the desert. The gloved man is once again briefly seen in downtown Olathe, standing on a cliff in the background and quickly disappearing again. He later appears at the traveller's campsite and viciously stabs Alex, severely wounding him.
- Crapsack World: The Hero of Another Story angle shows off different parts of Olathe, but they're arguably worse than the places Brad visits in the original game. The driving force behind the plot concerns Alex searching for a place in the wastes that isn't one of these.
- Garbage Island is a disgusting landfill populated by people who're too apathetic or scared to seek out a better place to live. They pretend to like the island's squalor and end up fetishizing it, not wanting to confront the inadequacy of their living conditions. Alex, Joel, and Georgy killing Roland appears to break the taboo, as some of the people who can be spoken to afterwards express doubts about staying on the island.
- Downtown Olathe manages to be even more inhospitable by being a war-torn hellhole. Initially, the city is locked in an endless turf war between various gangs, but then the Infinity Franchise arrives and plunges the area into further chaos. It's implied that once everyone in downtown Olathe is dead (and a great number of people die during this chapter), the franchise will move on to a new area and kill everyone there too.
- Crutch Character: Georgy. While he can't do much damage with his trowel, he can Brag to taunt enemies, and he's bulky enough to take a few hits for Alex and Joel. However, once you take down Roland, his Joy addiction kicks in and renders him essentially worthless in battle, and he leaves once you reach House Dust.
- The Cameo: Rick appears in a TV show Alex watches while scavenging a house.
- In Alex's flashback to the martial arts tournament late in the game, Yado is waiting at the same bus stop, and the two have a brief conversation.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Alex Churchland strongly contrasts with Brad and Buddy. While he has had difficulties growing up, he still had positive influences in his life and is never implied to be abused in any way, with no canonical joy addiction either. As a result, he holds no trauma and is never hostile without reason and is ultimately just another guy trying to survive in a Crapsack World. This is further shown with how he treats Joel, as while Brad has no problem sacrificing his party members and Buddy's openly hostile toward Rando out of a combination of distrust and Joy, he and Joel are True Companions and the only truly selfish act Alex could make is killing a man and his dog for the sake of getting first aid for Joel.
- Cosmic Horror Story: The Infinity Franchise has shades of this, especially if the more supernatural elements aren't just hallucinations. The power of Infinity is an unknowable entity that humanity is powerless to resist. It compels even the most seemingly normal people to act on their primordial, violent tendencies. There doesn't seem to be any complicated motivation for why they willingly give themselves up to Infinity, other than the sheer visceral thrill of holding power over life and death. It's implied the Franchise will keep replenishing its lost members until every person on the planet is dead.
- Dark and Troubled Past: From what is shown, Alex might not have had the best life pre-flash. He's shown at the beginning of the game to possibly have no parents, only his aunt to keep watch over him. To say nothing about the martial arts tournament...
- Denser and Wackier: The game manages to be both this and Darker and Edgier simultaneously. There's a lot more levity than there was in The Joyful, but there's a disturbing and surreal undercurrent to most of it. The horror is quite understated and usually of the minimal, atmospheric variety.
- Developer's Foresight: It's possible to kill Anaconda Virtue before he runs away. If you do so, he has a unique line.
- Disc-One Nuke: It is possible through a series of specific actions and a bit of RNG to kill Dex Muldoon before he explodes. This instantly jumps Alex and Joel to level 6, making the rest of Garbage Island a cakewalk.
- Doomed by Canon: Georgy is the Joy Mutant Brad can fight on Garbage Island, which is foreshadowed by his Joy addiction.
- Down in the Dumps: Garbage Island.
- Driven to Suicide: The Cellophane Communion encourages ritualistic suicide by asphyxiation to 'become one with the garbage'. One of the first areas accessible is a mass grave, filled with the bodies of former members.
- Dying Town: Alex and Joel pass through one after escaping the Infinity Franchise, whose lonely warlord is complaining about everyone leaving.
- Eagleland: Pre-Flash America is shown to be at war with New Zealand. It's unknown if this has anything to do with the Flash, but considering that Joy was originally canonically developed to be used for war, it may have been a lead-up to it.
- Early-Bird Cameo: A very easy to miss one. Georgy, a party member early on in the game, leaves Alex's party a while after they enter the mainland. If one remembers Garbage Island in The Painful, they might recognize Georgy as one of the Joy Mutants Brad fights.
- Eldritch Location: Once you get enough kills in Downtown Olathe, the Cave of Infinite Testament opens up, leading to a massive lake of blood, being pumped out of a huge human heart you climb out of. In the blood lake, you can meet a receptionist, who offers Alex entry to the Infinity Franchise and urges him to keep fighting and killing. It's left deliberately unclear if this is a hallucination, or if something more is happening.
- Everything Fades: Averted for the most part. Unlike LISA: The Painful, all the enemies you fight will still be present as bloodied corpses, with some exceptions, such as gameplay limitations, and if said enemies are just KO'd.
- Evil Army: The Infinity Franchise. While Rando's Army has bad seeds, Rando ultimately wants to establish peace in Olathe. The Infinity Franchise however only believes in perpetuating violence against everyone who isn't them and continues to exist because people join up for protection - even then there's nothing stopping members from offing each other.
- Failure Is the Only Option: In keeping with the game's theme of futility, Alex does not reach enlightenment in his quest to stroke the plastic. He simply feels disgusted and gets a stat drop. Returning to Larry Davis will have him express disappointment in you, but Alex gets a stat increase.
- During Alex's flashback to the tournament, you can't win any of the fights. Any dial combo attack will end with Alex getting dumped on his ass, and going for the Groin Attack gets him disqualified.
- Fictional Country: You may end up missing it, but in the martial arts tournament room decorated with the flags of various countries, there's an unknown black flag with a white circle among them. It's not known if something will come from it, however.
- Gaiden Game: To Painful and Joyful. Though the game is canon to the overall LISA story according to Word of God, it has nothing to do with Brad or Buddy Armstrong and takes place in an entirely separate location which features no references to either game besides a cameo from Rick Weeks on a TV broadcast.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Joel gains the Broken Ribs status effect after he and Alex escape the Infinity Franchise.
- At the end of the game, Alex is brutally stabbed by Hugo. With every stab, the game points out Alex's stat drops as a result of his injuries.
- The Ghost: Rando is mentioned, you fight a few of his soldiers, and Buddy appears on posters as her discovery is announced to the world.
- Ghost Town: Alex and Joel pass through one in the Endless Wastes.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: One battle against a rather weak member of the Infinity Franchise is suddenly interrupted when another member chucks a television at and kills him. He also tries to kill Alex and Joel and is far tougher than the man he just killed.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: There are multiple enemies who can throw glass bottles at you while you're fighting them, and you can retort by throwing your own bottles back at them. Due to Joel's high ATK stat from his Bolt Action Pistol, a thrown bottle from him can be a surprisingly swift way to end a fight early.
- The Gunslinger: Joel has a slick outfit and a cool gun... but he only has one bullet and he has no intention of firing it.
- Harder Than Hard: Agony mode is currently in the works and will feature additional battles and higher difficulty. On the plus side, Office Ottoman got confirmed as a party member.
- Hero of Another Story:
- Alex and Joel. The game is very much stated to be taking place during the early events of The Painful.
- In a sense, this is applicable to all of the NPCs of this game. Both Garbage Island and Downtown Olathe are very dynamic, and NPCs will move around, react to what the player has done, grow hostile, or get killed by others. Keeping track of where all the individual characters go serves as a kind of Rewatch Bonus in a consequent playthrough. And some NPCs seem to have a lot of story to them that Alex just doesn't see, like the turban-wearing gang who are trying to retrieve the pink pill but get gradually picked off by franchisers as time goes on.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: In Alex's flashback, he can't win the martial arts tournament. Either Alex loses 0-5, he forfeits, or he gets disqualified for kicking his opponent in the groin.
- It Works Better with Bullets: When Hugo attacks the campsite, Joel tries to fire his one bullet at him to save Alex, but he forgets to load it in.
- Lighter and Softer: Heavily downplayed. While the main theme is generally accepted to be a bit lighter than The Painful's, having less focus on the topic of sexual assault, body horror, and has a generally more hopeful feel to it combined with more Black Comedy, it's still a LISA game.
- Luck-Based Mission: When you meet Dex Muldoon, you're supposed to escape the fight; however, it's possible to deplete his 1850 health in three turns to kill him. It jumps Joel and Alex to level 6, making Garbage Island a cakewalk. However, it requires pretty much all your starting resources and a lot of Save Scumming.tip
- MacGuffin: The Pink Pill. Whatever it is, it's worth enough to pay for Alex's medical care and buy passage on the Neon Flamingos bus. The description implies it has 'occult qualities', and the Marauders worship it, but very little else is known.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Unlike Brad, who has hallucinations as a result of taking Joy, Alex and Joel have no such addiction so the weird stuff they end up seeing (especially with regards to the Infinity Franchise) just seems to be flat-out magic.
- Meaningful Name: See All for Nothing. There's also the fact that downtown Olathe is swarmed with the violent Infinity Franchise, who intend to keep perpetuating their brand of aimless violence indefinitely.
- Morton's Fork: If you offer the Dollar to the barterers on Garbage Island, you'll get offered either a gummy worm or a key. Late in the game, you can find the door the key opens. Inside is a gummy worm.
- Nasty Party: The dinner scene. Most attendants end up killing each other.
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Nintendo Hard: For starters, save points are not only one-use, they function more like checkpoints, activating automatically once you get close to them. Of your two permanent party members, Joel can't attack at all, and Alex is an SP-dependent fighter with very low max SP. Money and items are in short supply, meaning you're forced to rely on Alex and Joel's SP restoring abilities to carry you through tough fights...and there's a lot of tough fights. Without figuring out ways to synergize Alex and Joel's skills to lock down enemies and maximize damage output, you won't make it far. - Optional Boss: It's probably easier to count the enemies that actually are required.
- Pet the Dog: Somebody tries to give advice to Alex after the martial arts tournament. It's Yado.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: The Minor Iris and Major Iris are rapid fire hand strikes.
- Recurring Boss: Anaconda Virtue needs to be fought three times before he's actually put down. It's possible to kill him during the first two fights. He flees when his health drops below a certain threshold; if you can reduce his health to zero from above that threshold, he dies (and even has a unique line).
- Red Herring: You can find an Impeccable Gold Brolex on Garbage Island, which the game helpfully describes as a barter item. The barterers on Garbage Island, however, won't touch it, and Georgy swipes it when you reach the mainland, leaving you with his worthless fake watch.
- Religion of Evil:
- The Cellophane Communion is a cult dedicated to worshipping the garbage on Garbage Island. Its members live off rotten food scraps and seagull jerky, spending their days digging through trash, trading garbage for more garbage, and even humping piles of trash. Ultimately, nearly all of them commit suicide by tying plastic bags around their heads, becoming part of Garbage Island.
- The Infinity Franchise is somehow connected to a huge batch of bootleg basketball jerseys. Those who join the Franchise are overtaken by violent urges, attacking and killing just for the sake of spreading mayhem and chaos. It's left unclear whether this is simply mass psychosis or if there's something more at play.
- Scenery Porn: The much more detailed environments allows for this. Special mention to the autumn land of Olathe, which is lush with trees and foliage.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Win or lose, after the fight with Arnold Shpitz, Alex and Joel jump off a cliff to get away, either from Arnold or a mob of Franchisers.
- Sequel Hook: The current iteration of the game ends on an ambiguous note, with a critically injured Alex on a bus, riding towards a huge city illuminated with purple beams of light.
- Shop Fodder: The barterers on Garbage Island only deal in trash, and most of the items you can barter for have no use other than being sold.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Suicide Attack: This is what Dex Muldoon attempts during his fight. He has many sticks of dynamite attached to his body, and after three in-game turns, he will detonate them, blowing both himself and you up, giving you an instant game over. You have two options during the fight; simply escape from the battle, allowing Dex to blow himself up and leave you unharmed, or you can attempt to deplete Dex's massive health-pool (which will require a bit of planning ahead beforehand, as you will need four empty bottles in your inventory to defeat him).
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity: You can find over a dozen Man-Made Salts (clears oil, burning, and buffs Special Defense) lying around the lower levels of Downtown Olathe. You can also find the Recurring Boss Anaconda Virtue down there as well...
- Taking You with Me: Dex Muldoon tries this on Alex and Joel; if you don't escape the fight (or kill him), he will explode at the start of the fourth turn, giving you an immediate Game Over.
- Tempting Fate: When you first head to downtown Olathe, a few normal Non Player Characters comment that the Infinity Franchise is likely to burn itself out. This is somewhat supported by the pile of dead bodies nearby. Toward the end of the area, almost all of the NPCs are either dead or converted to the Franchise and even killing a number of them - including their strongest present soldier - does not stop their spread.
- The Promised Land: The city that Alex sets out to find. Whether it will turn out to be real or not is difficult to determine, as the game has yet to be completed.
- To Be Continued: The creator of the game has stated that the remainder of the game is in the works, but that it will likely take over a year until it's finished.
- Too Awesome to Use: Joy. It's only available at House Dust before Chaz mutates, and each pill after the free sample costs 40 mags. It gives a massive boost to offensive and defensive stats, like all the other games, but it's so scarce it's likely you'll never use it.
- True Companions: Alex and Joel.
- Unexplained Recovery: Rick appears in a TV show Alex watches... despite Brad beating him near-fatally in The Painful. Of course, that's assuming that the program was even real to begin with.
- Urban Hellscape: While the rest of Olathe isn't exactly peachy keen either, downtown Olathe is a huge city whose inhabitants are in a constant turf war with each other.
- Useless Item: A bunch.
- The Polyethylene Bag can't be sold, and if you use it, it flies away in the wind.
- The Eerie Record you can pick up after fighting Chaz has no use in the game at all.
- The Impeccable Gold Brolex only exists to get swiped by Georgy and replaced with a fake that sells for one mag.
- The Silver Angel is a barter item, found about thirty minutes before the end of the game, long after you've left the only barterers in the game behind.
- Useless Useful Spell: Disarming Chop sounds like it should be useful, but it does dismal damage for a 20SP move, and it's likely whoever you disarm will just pick their weapon back up the next turn.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: As Alex explores Garbage Island, he will occasionally stop to puke his guts out. This costs 10 HP every time.
- War for Fun and Profit: The Game in Downtown Olathe is implied to be this. The gangs in the turf war (especially in the initial area) are all near each other yet isn't shown fighting and their leaders are on mostly good terms with each other; it's further implied that their fighting never got lethal or serious until the Infinity Franchise rolled in.
- Word-Salad Horror: The TV show (NSFW) Alex can watch in the last area of the game. Overlapping with Surreal Horror, it features a host rambling to a scarred, and later bloodied and beaten Rick about the nature of sin, interspersed with cuts to other, equally nonsensical programs.
