A masterclass in brief 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 parts of the sport don’t depend on chases or leap scares, however as a substitute executes an unimaginable sense of creep, unease, thriller and dread.
The gameplay is straightforward. It’s a must to verify the standard of the dolls that come via your manufacturing line by performing various 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 whenever you tilt them backwards they are saying one thing endearing. Acceptable dolls proceed alongside the conveyer belt, whereas failing dolls have to be disposed of through a chute.
The checks improve in problem as you acclimatise to the position. It’s a must to verify 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 really thrive, the routine performing as an absorbing basis for the dread to flourish. At its most elementary 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 shiny 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 follow flying off the roof. They’ve lifeless 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 when you don’t escape. Escape, nonetheless, appears unattainable below the watchful eye of your boss, who will make it clear instantly when you have made the slightest mistake, but is set to maintain you right here.
You don’t see any of the world outdoors the manufacturing facility and also you don’t get a alternative as as to if or to not present up once more in your shift the subsequent morning. The one rationalization the sport provides for why you retain coming in is a quick rationalization firstly, saying you want the cash. You don’t have lease or payments to pay in-game. The one factor you are able to do with the cash is purchase trinkets (and, when you’re fortunate, one vital merchandise) to brighten your desk.
Whereas it appears like this would possibly undermine the stress, it manages to work whatever the incomplete monetary mechanic. Displaying 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 shortage of alternatives to make your personal alternative, if something, solely provides to the sensation that you’re trapped on this hellish place.
Regardless of being a reasonably brief recreation, Dollmare has an enormous quantity of environment that makes it really feel very value its low price ticket. And when you’re not happy when you’ve accomplished the story, it provides an countless mode the place you’ll be able to lose your self in dealing with creepy dolls to your coronary heart’s content material.
