A masterclass briefly and easy but extremely efficient horror, Dollmare is a recreation contained absolutely throughout the plunging shadows of a creepy doll manufacturing facility the place you’re a high quality assessor. The horror components of the sport don’t depend on chases or bounce scares, however as a substitute executes an unbelievable sense of creep, unease, thriller and dread.
The gameplay is easy. You need to affirm the standard of the dolls that come by means of your manufacturing line by performing quite a few checks. These start pretty simply. You make sure the dolls have the right variety of limbs and eyes, that their garments aren’t broken or soiled, and that once you tilt them backwards they are saying one thing endearing. Acceptable dolls proceed alongside the conveyer belt, whereas failing dolls should be disposed of by way of a chute.
The checks enhance in problem as you acclimatise to the position. You need to test for hidden international objects with an X-ray machine and sinister graffiti with a UV mild. You’re additionally tasked with repairing dolls with lacking limbs in a separate room lined with cabinets of dismembered doll components.
These actions are broadly not troublesome. The simplicity of Dollmare is what permits the creepiness to actually thrive, the routine appearing as an absorbing basis for the dread to flourish. At its most simple degree, the sport is already pretty creepy. The deep shadows of the manufacturing facility give the entire setting an extremely eerie really feel, with the dolls’ chubby cheeks and vivid eyes including a way of the uncanny valley to even your most profitable efforts.
The corrupted dolls are creepier nonetheless. Their eyes and limbs jerk in inhuman methods. They encourage you to play with knives and apply flying off the roof. They’ve useless rats of their chest cavities and pentagrams painted on their backs. That is compounded by dolls that seem out of nowhere and demand to be performed with, and notes you discover across the manufacturing facility from a former employee warning you concerning the destiny that awaits you in case you don’t escape. Escape, nevertheless, appears unattainable below the watchful eye of your boss, who will make it clear instantly when you have made the slightest mistake, but is decided to maintain you right here.
You don’t see any of the world exterior the manufacturing facility and also you don’t get a selection as as to if or to not present up once more on your shift the following morning. The one clarification the sport gives for why you retain coming in is a quick clarification in the beginning, saying you want the cash. You don’t have hire or payments to pay in-game. The one factor you are able to do with the cash is purchase trinkets (and, in case you’re fortunate, one important merchandise) to embellish your desk.
Whereas it seems like this would possibly undermine the stress, it manages to work whatever the incomplete monetary mechanic. Exhibiting up day after day to a job that generates a rising sense of unease for cash you use up on frivolous toys isn’t in any respect an unrelatable expertise. The dearth of alternatives to make your personal selection, if something, solely provides to the sensation that you’re trapped on this hellish place.
Regardless of being a reasonably quick recreation, Dollmare has an enormous quantity of environment that makes it really feel very price its low price ticket. And in case you’re not glad when you’ve accomplished the story, it gives an limitless mode the place you possibly can lose your self in dealing with creepy dolls to your coronary heart’s content material.
