Steam is getting a new puzzle-platformer in March 2026, eight years after its initial launch on 8th-generation consoles. On the one hand, the game, which is called The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince, has the energy of so many landmark, story-driven side-scrollers, a subgenre led by the likes of Inside and Ori and the Blind Forest. But at the same time, its Hollow Knight-esque hand-drawn animation and team-centric gameplay reminiscent of It Takes Two make it more unconventional.
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a clever inversion of the traditional damsel in distress narrative. Players assume the role of a seemingly meek young girl hiding a gruesome secret: she can transform into a massive wolf-like creature. One day, while roaming the woods in wolf form, the girl is surprised by a boy prince and reflexively lashes out at him, injuring his eyes and rendering him blind. Wracked with guilt for maiming the innocent child, the girl decides to help the boy, escorting him to a witch who has the power to restore his eyesight.
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The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince Is Basically One Long, Bittersweet Escort Mission
I’m well aware that escort missions aren’t exactly very popular among gamers. Personally, I usually dislike them quite a bit, as they can often feel like filler content designed to fill “dead air” that’s unaccounted for in mission design, or to artificially inflate a game’s runtime. This is an issue that’s especially pronounced in the AAA space, where leading, following, and general “walk here, do this” missions are seemingly worshiped as the height of immersion.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are a lot of games where escorting or following an NPC somewhere can be quite compelling, particularly when these dynamics are well-defined and purpose-built. Take a game like Resident Evil 4, for instance: protecting Ashley from zombies can be difficult, but it’s a conflict baked into the narrative of the game, making it interesting. Mechanically, Ashley is totally helpless compared to Leon, which further increases tension—a must-have for any horror experience.
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince does something similar, albeit with more unsettling, heartbreaking implications. The “princess,” whose human form is a farce designed to gain the blind boy’s trust, is dishonest and conniving, but her heart is in the right place. Meanwhile, the prince is an inherently sympathetic character, victimized, injured, and caught up in events beyond his comprehension. Thus, a compelling narrative context underpins every moment of gameplay.
This paves the way for The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince‘s shape-shifting and puzzle mechanics. Because the prince cannot see, and because the princess still transforms into a wolf when exposed to moonlight, players have to switch between her human and wolf forms in order to help the prince past various obstacles and enemies that wish him further harm. The deceit at the heart of The Liar Princess‘s narrative forms the backbone of its gameplay, linking the narrative to the mechanics in an interesting, complex way.
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Hopefully, a Re-Release Will Give The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince a Second Lease on Life
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince was released in 2018 for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PS Vita, though you could be forgiven for not knowing that: the game arrived to little fanfare, only collecting a handful of reviews from major outlets before quickly fading into varying degrees of obscurity. On top of this, the reviews that it did get were hardly sterling, with most critics scoring it in the 7/10 range, and some going as low as 5/10.
Something that these critics seem to agree on is that, while it has some fairly pedestrian mechanics, story and atmosphere make The Liar Princess special. The ethical complexity of the princess character is rarely seen in the world of gaming, which tends to favor protagonists who are morally upright, aspirational, or otherwise simplistic. Without getting into spoilers, it’s fair to say that The Liar Princess maintains this focus on dark, thought-provoking storytelling throughout its runtime, offering a narrative that is regularly surprising and emotionally affecting. It’s also worth noting that the game never feels mean-spirited or nasty in any way, despite the darker parts of its story.
These elements, coupled with a striking storybook aesthetic, are more than enough reason for The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince to see success in 2026. It certainly flew under the radar when it launched in late 2018 in Japan, and again when it released globally in 2019, but indie games have only grown in popularity since then. There’s also been a surge in narrative-focused games that prize story and atmosphere over mechanics, and with gaming demographics becoming more diverse over time, perhaps there’s more room for The Liar Princess to thrive this year.
