LISA, in a sense, is what indie games are all about. It's one thing to be willing to make a game with an identity clearly inspired directly by another, but despite having the most apparent inspiration of almost any of the EarthBound clones we've seen emerge, LISA forms its own personality by virtue of just... how indie it is. There's something to be said about how most games you play now, even independent ones, had large funding or a larger team than they let on, and LISA is no different being a kickstarted game, yet LISA has something... special about it. Other developers might wonder "Should I really include that?" "Is that a step too far?" "Does that fit?" "Is this unfair design?" And many, many more questions, but Austin Jorgensen (Dingaling) clearly just kept on rolling.

Take it this way, in a world where even more games that claim to be made by only a few guys now have some form of great funding, playtesting and refinement, LISA isn't refined, it isn't perfect and it isn't pretty, but it tells it like it is, whether that means making you sit through a monologue that's overly long just because the developer thought it was funny, casually joking about ridiculously dark subjects, or subjecting you to legitimately heartfelt but brutal scenes; none of it would fly elsewhere, nor would the ability to permanently have party members die or the weird 2D platforming welded into a JRPG, but at least it's sincere. Scrappy, weird and crude, but profoundly sincere in a way no other game is.