A masterclass briefly and easy but extremely efficient horror, Dollmare is a recreation contained absolutely inside the plunging shadows of a creepy doll manufacturing unit the place you’re a high quality assessor. The horror components of the sport don’t depend on chases or soar scares, however as a substitute executes an unimaginable sense of creep, unease, thriller and dread.
The gameplay is straightforward. You need to verify the standard of the dolls that come by way of your manufacturing line by performing quite a few checks. These start pretty simply. You make sure the dolls have the proper variety of limbs and eyes, that their garments aren’t broken or soiled, and that while 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 issue as you acclimatise to the position. You need to test for hidden overseas objects with an X-ray machine and sinister graffiti with a UV gentle. 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 tough. The simplicity of Dollmare is what permits the creepiness to really thrive, the routine appearing as an absorbing basis for the dread to flourish. At its most elementary stage, the sport is already pretty creepy. The deep shadows of the manufacturing unit 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 observe 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 unit from a former employee warning you in regards to the destiny that awaits you in case you don’t escape. Escape, nonetheless, appears inconceivable underneath the watchful eye of your boss, who will make it clear instantly in case you have made the slightest mistake, but is set to maintain you right here.
You don’t see any of the world exterior the manufacturing unit and also you don’t get a selection as as to whether or to not present up once more to your shift the subsequent morning. The one rationalization the sport gives for why you retain coming in is a short rationalization initially, 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, in case you’re fortunate, one vital merchandise) to embellish your desk.
Whereas it looks like this would possibly undermine the strain, 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 individual 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 happy 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.
