Alessia’s Dollhouse Review (PC)

It was sometime back in my adolescent years that I found an indie horror—Pizza Delivery, if my memory serves me correctly. It was in that game that I learned one thing about conventional horror: gender, race, or religious beliefs forgiving, that the pizza delivery guy is far more likely to be the victim of a brutal haunting by some paranormal force than the average John Doe. The point is, when I came to untangle the roots of Wasper Games’ Alessia’s Dollhouse, I sort of knew I was going to get the short end of the stick, for I was to be none other than that same unfortunate soul who was to deliver a pizza to an ominous stranger. As for what was to take place in the aftermath of the delivery was another question, albeit highly irrelevant — refer back to the previous tidbit about pizza delivery folk.

I’m not going to pretend that they didn’t catch my eye—the blatant references to indie horrors such as Visage and Emily Wants to Play—because they did. After all, with the exception of a semi-irregular location and an out-of-the-box protagonist, Alessia’s Dollhouse essentially came pre-loaded with all of the same seasonal trimmings and tropes that we’ve seen countless times in other dollhouse-centric iterations. But that wasn’t an issue; Emily Wants to Play was one of the best slept-on indies of 2015, so for what it was worth, Alessia’s Dollhouse was sort of the natural choice for remediating those post-completion blues — only nine years after its inception.

Anyway, Alessia’s Dollhouse has just this moment launched on the Steam marketplace. So, if you are planning on picking it up and taking a slice for keeps, then allow us to fill in the blanks and offer a few quick pre-purchase pointers. Let’s talk.

Alessia Also Wants to Play

Slipping into the begrudging role of a teary-eyed pizza courier wasn’t ever going to be a walk in the park; Alessia’s Dollhouse made that pretty clear right from the get-go, funnily enough. It also didn’t require a gift of clairvoyance to comprehend what was going to happen to me just as soon as I rolled up to the dark and seemingly desolate roots of an old home. Shock horror — nobody wanted a slice of pizza; they wanted a slice of me, and I, rather reluctantly, felt obligated to fulfill their deepest desires, even at the expense of earning a little extra tip on the side. That wasn’t in the cards, but, being the pepped-up optimist that I was, I made the decision to throw caution to the wind and enter, all the while choosing to neglect that one all-important rule: the pizza guy always dies.

Alessia’s Dollhouse twists and turns in a similar fashion as a lot of keystone horror games; naturally, it revolves around a spooky house, a playful yet oddly sadistic bunch of puppets, and an ominous ambiance, to boot. Like Emily Wants to Play—a horror that also sports all of the same characters, themes, and mechanics, weirdly enough—the gameplay consists of exploring the house in question, and unraveling a rather generic spool of information about its origins and the events that once claimed the souls of the dolls. To that end, you don’t have to do a great deal, other than swiftly move between corridors and other dimly lit areas, and basically touch gloves with a few toys.

Dolls — Who’d Have ‘Em?

Alright, so technically there is a bit more to the story than walking from one anchor point to the next. As it turns out, the game also features three rather distinct puppets: a foe that has the power to freeze you in your tracks; a foe that stalks you from the shadows; and a foe that can transport you to the unspeakable depths of a nightmarish reality. It’s your role in this ongoing feud with the dolls to forage for clues and uncover the truth behind their existence. And that sounds all rather straightforward, at least on paper, anyway — but it isn’t, thanks to each of the puppet’s tendencies to keep you second-guessing and forever changing the way you approach things.

Alessia’s Dollhouse adopts a gameplay style that’s more trial-and-error-based than fluid and structured. What I mean to say here is that, even though you can devise your own strategies, there isn’t really anything to say that the same approach will work the second time around. And, rather frustratingly, this tends to remain the case throughout the entirety of the story, which means that you’ll often struggle to acquire the same results in each new attempt. It doesn’t help, either, that each enemy has a habit of spawning at different times and locations, several of which often orbit the same spot as another foe on the board. But then, that’s sort of where the biggest challenge lies: learning how to juggle more balls than you dare to carry. Is it doable? Yes. Is it fun? Eh — it’s not not fun.

A Few Screws Loose

To say that Alessia’s Dollhouse is mechanically sound wouldn’t be entirely true, as it does indeed suffer from one of two technical issues—unresponsive interfaces, missing button inputs and icons, and not to mention an enemy speed that, quite frankly, is way over the top and almost impossible to counteract. Rather annoyingly, most of these flaws tend to creep out from beneath the woodwork during the latter portions of the game—a segment that involves you sprinting from one location to the next in search of several fuses, and hiding in certain areas to avoid the three dolls. As a lot of these puppets are jackknifed into the map without providing you with any formal warning, this essentially means that you don’t really stand a chance of surviving. Well, technically you can survive, though it’s more likely to be entirely to do with luck and not, for example, skill.

Aside from the one or two technical drawbacks, there just isn’t a great deal to do in Alessia’s Dollhouse. Sure, there are several tapes to collect and what have you, but other than that, there just isn’t much else to provide you with additional information or context. What’s more, as there are only several rooms to run back and forth between, as well as only a single floor to explore, there isn’t enough space to maneuver, either. In other words, it’s almost too easy to onboard the lion’s share of the game’s features in the first ten or fifteen minutes. After that, well, it becomes almost predictable and passionless. And that’s a crying shame, truly.

Verdict

Alessia’s Dollhouse is, at least in my opinion, a game that looks more like a spiritual successor to Emily Wants to Play than an original piece of artwork. That isn’t a bad thing, mind you, but I’d also be lying if I said that it hosts a never-before-seen collection of features and mechanics, too. The truth is, this isn’t anything we haven’t seen countless times before, and so, while I do feel relatively comfortable with handing out a few points for its ability to amplify the fear factor, I can’t quite bring myself to commemorate a lot of its assets—the settings, characters, and generic gameplay loop, for instance. It’s not that they’re bad; it’s just that they’re a little, I don’t know, predictable.

I can’t say that I left Alessia’s Dollhouse with a sense of accomplishment, but rather, a certain feeling of disappointment and frustration, which was mostly due to the fact that, even during the “scarier” times, a lot of the quality was often marred by some rather janky mechanics or disadvantageous spawn traps. I can’t say that it was all bad, but I did reach a point in the campaign where things transitioned from being downright terrifying and immersive to repetitive and even a little tedious. And honestly, that wasn’t a great way to close the book on the story. I wanted to enjoy the crescendo, but I was left feeling disgruntled and unable to appreciate the smaller details.

To answer that initial question of whether or not Alessia’s Dollhouse is worth playing — eh, I’d give it a few more weeks in the oven, to be honest. With that said, if you’re one for glossing over the flaws, then you might just be able to find something of worth in the four walls of Alessia’s Dollhouse.