Dollhouse
by Aethyna
May 30, 2019 |
1
Votes |
1
Played |
0
Reviews
8
rate
Genres:
AdventureGraphics:
3DLabels:
HorrorPlatforms:
Publishers:
SOEDESCO Publishing Casting you as the main protagonist, a detective called Marie, Dollhouse is a super creepy, horror game with an epic “based on a true story” plot, amazing noir theme that’s set in the 1950s and has an “escape from the maze”-style gameplay, where you’ll need to seek out and collect memory canisters, slot them into the memory machine and to open the door to the next Chapter. Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Casting you as the main protagonist, a detective called Marie, Dollhouse is a super creepy, horror game with an epic “based on a true story” plot, amazing noir theme that’s set in the 1950s and has an “escape from the maze”-style gameplay, where you’ll need to seek out and collect memory canisters, slot them into the memory machine and to open the door to the next Chapter.
Plotline
The year is 1959. You play as the detective Marie who finds herself trapped within a nightmarish maze-like world created by her amnesiac mind. As she tries to recover her past memories while unraveling the secrets hidden within, she’s being haunted by murderous mannequins and dolls who will do whatever it takes to stop her from remembering.
As you play, you’ll get to piece together the story behind the game, revealing what really happened to Marie’s niece. However, what makes this game unique is that it actually allows you to experience the story (a.k.a. noir film) in several ways depending on the difficulty level and how you decide to arrange the clips to form the “movie”. You can also analyze evidences that you collect to unlock new story snippets in your journal.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay, Dollhouse is more of an eerie-themed, item-finding, maze-navigating game where there are plenty of items for you to find and collect for use later, like the chalk, which can be used to mark walls; and flash, which will help illuminate your pitch black surrounding for a brief period of time; or stuff to analyze for your journal, such as quotes on walls and some mannequins.
However, ultimately, your goal is to find and recover your lost memories that are somehow stored in canisters, and slot them into the memory machine to “collect” them. When you have enough memories, you can then open the golden door and proceed to the next Chapter. Of course, finding stuff isn’t exactly the hard part, even though it’s hard enough to do so in pitch black darkness with a torchlight that can needs to be recharge pretty constantly.
You’ll also have some abilities that you can use to reach your goal. In fact, I’d say that this game has a pretty unique ability system that I’ve never seen before in a horror game. There are plenty of abilities that you can unlock but you can only bring along up to 3 abilities in your loadout. These abilities work by using charges, and they can sometimes help a lot by allowing you to destroy traps and mannequins.
There’s another default ability that you’ll get in this game is the double-edged Focus ability. Basically, the ability lets you see through your pursuer’s eye, allowing you to see through the hedges/walls of the maze and also in the dark, which definitely comes in handy. The items you can pick up will also be highlighted when Focus is used, but know that every time you track items using your Focus mode, it will allow the murderous mannequin to find you more easily. If it does, you will probably end up dead.
Dying in this game can be very frustrating though, mainly because you’ll lose all memory canisters when you do. After all, it’s hard enough to find the canisters while getting chased after by homicidal and animated mannequins, or any other dangers the lurk in the hedge maze.
So, due to this, if playing the game in its normal mode is just out of the question, then you might want to check out its Voyeur mode. This mode removes all the dangers within the maze, giving you free rein to explore the place and complete your goals. Basically, you get to enjoy the story without all the constant dying!
The game has 6 chapters in all, featuring a procedurally generated maze for each different location, ranging from the hedge maze at the beginning to a hospital, a fancy hotel, and a movie set.
Community
Although the main story in Dollhouse is a single-player experience, the game actually has a multiplayer mode where you and a bunch of other players will be assigned a target to murder respectively. This means that as you track down your target, you’ll need to be constantly aware that you might be the target of any other player you bump into. There are 14 characters to play as and each of them has a unique story that you can unlock.
Graphics/ Sound
The first thing that really caught my eye is definitely the game’s 1950s film noir theme. Almost everything in this game is shown in black and white, or at least in shades of those two colors, except for important objects like doors, memory machines, and items that you can pick up. The game doesn’t have a lot of sounds either. Instead, it makes use of its silence to wreak havoc on your overactive imagination.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, Dollhouse is fascinating film noir horror game that has a nice array of unique features including an ability/loadout system, the voyeur mode, and others, in addition to its great story and nice atmosphere/theme. The gameplay can be really challenging as well if you play the game in its normal mode. Definitely, a game that’s worth a look if you’re a huge fan of noir horror games!
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