Be it movies, TV shows, books or games, the horror genre often tends to work best when it focuses on one or two central themes to build stories around. Some of the best works in the genre tend to double down on this, complete with recurring motifs that tend to circle back to the story’s central themes. Even games like Silent Hill 2 explored the concept of guilt, while a franchise as campy as Resident Evil still managed to include interesting themes like that of family in the newer games. Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror’s primary theme revolves around inheriting the consequences of the sins of your ancestors.
Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror puts you in the shoes of celebrated singer Eliza de Moor. The story largely revolves around Eliza exploring her past in an effort to find herself again. The setup is quite simple; one evening, during a performance, Eliza suddenly collapses. On waking up, she finds that she has no memory of who she is or what happened, and has been taken into the care of Dr. Stern – a man claiming to be quite close with the de Moor family. In the early minutes of the game, Eliza and Dr. Stern come to an agreement about trying out an experimental treatment that promises to be extra spooky.
“The horror is ramped up very quickly once you actually reach Ravenhill”
Most of Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror takes place in the quaint town of Ravenhill, which was once well regarded for its dollmaking industry. The horror is ramped up very quickly once you actually reach Ravenhill and try to get to the de Moor family mansion, which is referred to by the people of the town as the Dollhouse. Interestingly, there aren’t any characters that you interact with throughout your time exploring Ravenhill. The story is almost entirely told either through vivid hallucinations, or through notes you find strewn about in the town and the Dollhouse. Even Dr. Stern, who is supposed to be accompanying you on this journey down memory lane, decides to maintain his distance from you in order to make sure that the “therapy” works.
In this way, Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror does a pretty decent job at setting up its atmosphere. Since you’re always alone, the sense of isolation is incredibly thick. Interestingly, despite the lack of people in Ravenhill, the game does a good job in making you believe that there might be hope around the corner. Good usage of lighting through hanging lanterns and candles always gives you the impression that, “maybe this house is safe and has someone I can talk to.”
Through Ravenhill, the game is able to tell an interesting story of the downfall of a small town. Largely told through environmental storytelling, like how certain houses might be in disarray while others are surprisingly clean, you get a pretty decent idea of what went down when the dolls inevitably rose up to fight against their masters. And ultimately, you start having to take down these dolls as well.
Most of the gameplay in Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror feels reminiscent of Resident Evil 7. You’re largely going to be exploring through dense environments, meticulously looking for clues and items that might help you figure out a way forward. Along the way, you’ll find cryptic puzzles that you have to solve, like finding the right statues to shoot in the correct order. And every now and then, you’ll have to use the more lethal qualities of your weapon to take on deranged dolls that are trying to kill you.
The puzzle design here isn’t particularly noteworthy. You’re not going to get head-scratching riddles that leave you running around looking for answers for hours on end. Most of the puzzles were fairly straightforward, and even managed to be quite self-contained to specific areas. If, for example, you happen to find a lock that requires a combination of numbers, you won’t have to go too far to find a letter that gives you the answer. The statue shooting example I used earlier was also confined to the same small area.
“Through Ravenhill, the game is able to tell an interesting story of the downfall of a small town”
Aside from having to fight against mindless enemies with limited resources, you also get similarly-cryptic yet simplistic puzzles, and even a minor crafting system that allows you to get more ammo. And considering the enemy AI, even fighting against dolls evokes a feeling similar to playing the Resident Evil HD Remake with modern controls that let you simply run around enemies without having to directly deal with them. Even the health and inventory system UIs feel like they might be from early drafts of a Resident Evil game.
The combat encounters in Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror don’t come about too often, but just about every single time you do have to fight something, the game feels much worse for it. The combat feels incredibly clunky thanks to monotonous enemies and an excruciatingly-slow movement speed, and the amount of ammo you get from early on tends to erase quite a bit of the tension that you might otherwise expect from a combat-centric horror title. Just about every bit of atmosphere the game slowly builds up thanks to its creepy environments and story tends to get obliterated the moment you have to engage in combat, and the game would have overall been much stronger had it simply skipped having a combat system to begin with or you know, made it better.
One of the big twists in Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror revolves around the use of mirrors. Every now and then, you will find mirrors that let you enter a different version of the area you’re in. Sometimes, this version might just be a glimpse into the past. Other times, it might end up being a much more surreal experience. These mirrors are used as a way to move forward, often marking a significant point in the game’s story. Sadly, there isn’t much more to these mirrors than just a sequence that occasionally happens. There aren’t any optional mirrors that you can find that might expand further on the plot, and they generally tend to stay on the linear path forward through the story.
“Just about every bit of atmosphere the game slowly builds up thanks to its creepy environments and story tends to get obliterated the moment you have to engage in combat”
Another area where the game loses quite a bit of its steam is in its visuals. While I am a firm believer that solid art direction is much more important to a game looking good than raw visual fidelity, Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror definitely loses a lot of what it was going for from the very beginning. At the risk of veering into the realm of hyperbole, Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror might just be one of the most dull and drab looking titles out there. Even at its highest settings, just about every surface looks like a muddy mess because of low-resolution textures, and the few characters you do meet early in the game tend to look like they might be ripped right out of an early PS3 game.
The only reason any of the thick atmosphere of the game is able to land is largely thanks to the clever use of lighting and the inherent creepiness of human-shaped dolls. The lighting is especially doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and plays a big part in instilling any sense of fear that might arise from the very idea of turning around a corner.
Dollhouse: Behind the Broken Mirror is a bit of a disappointment. There are some interesting ideas in its story and the creepy dolls that you often have to deal with end up largely being window-dressing. While there are some frights to be had, largely thanks to the excellent lighting throughout, the general monotony brought on by the game’s clunky combat system, poorly-designed enemies, and excruciatingly-slow movement speed tend to make the very idea of playing the game a rather boring experience.
This game was reviewed on PC.
