| Welcome to Doll Town | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Welcome to Doll Town Review Overview
What is Welcome to Doll Town?
Welcome to Doll Town lets players control Yumi, a student who takes a part-time job at the only convenience store in a once-vibrant village now shrouded in eeriness and fog. The game’s ambience rings similar to the traits and settings of the Silent Hill series. Doll Town was once famous for handcrafted dolls, but now factories, schools, and shrines stand empty.
Welcome to Doll Town features:
⚫︎ Brawler combat
⚫︎ Puzzle sections
⚫︎ Story-driven gameplay
⚫︎ Different protagonist costumes
⚫︎ New Game+
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Welcome to Doll Town’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $12.99 |
Welcome to Doll Town Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 They Story’s Actually Decent Hilarious Thematic Contrast |
Way Too Short for Its Price Not Enough of Everything Very Ineffective Audio Camerawork Needs Serious Reconsideration |
Welcome to Doll Town Story - 6/10
Hidden behind all of Welcome to Doll Town’s memes, gameplay issues, and audiovisual mess is a decent story about romance, bullying, revenge, and obsession. Though riddled with plot holes, it still deserves some praise for managing to pull off a compelling twist despite its limited runtime. Unfortunately, that same brevity ultimately hurts the narrative, turning what could have been a deep tale of a town’s tragic end into little more than part of the joke.
Welcome to Doll Town Gameplay - 4/10
While Welcome to Doll Town’s gameplay has a solid foundation, it ultimately falls flat due to its lack of content even more so than the story does. Quite frankly, there simply isn’t enough here, from combat and puzzles to exploration, to make the experience engaging at all. Worse still, a significant portion of the game just involves walking from point A to point B, which further drags the whole experience down.
Welcome to Doll Town Visuals - 6/10
Modern horror games that deliberately mimic the visual style of the early to mid-2000s often have a unique and imaginative charm. While Welcome to Doll Town attempts to capture that same grainy aesthetic, it’s not very good at it. Things like extremely frustrating indoor camera angles, excessive yet largely useless utilization of fog, and poor use of gore all effectively turn what might’ve been a spooky excursion of a desolate town into mere annoyance.
Welcome to Doll Town Audio - 4/10
The game includes every essential audio element except voice acting. Unfortunately, despite voice acting not being a strict requirement for success, the audio still manages to be disappointing across the board thanks to ineffective sound effects and music where they do exist, or weirdly absent where they should matter.
Welcome to Doll Town Value for Money - 5/10
A blind playthrough barely takes two hours to complete, which is extremely short considering that you only need about two runs to see everything the game has to offer. On top of that, the second run takes only a fraction of the time and is even less satisfying, since the puzzles and enemies change very little or not at all. If the price were about five dollars lower, this would have been an easy recommendation; but at its current cost, it’s best to wait for a sale.
Welcome to Doll Town Overall - 50/100
While I do appreciate a good joke, it’s hard to do so when it comes attached to a game so short that the humor can’t land. It’s kind of like paying for a demo. But although there’s really not enough to appreciate here, I do like how it commits to its bit enough to recommend it—as long as it’s on a big sale.
Welcome to Doll Town Review: An Empty Romance on Acid
A Joke Written With Clenched Fists
A couple of years ago, I reviewed a game called Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau. It heavily contrasted the horror genre with inappropriate—well, everything, really. I mean, it had schoolgirls and shrine maidens with military and government backgrounds fighting with and against ghosts where all sides used guns, martial arts, and foul language to win a turf war and save the world(?).
It was absolutely glorious. Sunk more hours there than what a normal reviewer would have taken just because I was enjoying the dissonance to an alarming degree. If only the release version wasn’t optimized for hardware that didn’t exist yet, it would have gotten an even better impression from everyone.
Welcome to Doll Town is sort of similar. It’s a horror game, yes, but it’s also stuffed full of things you really wouldn’t expect it to have. For example, it’s also a beat-em-up, and even allows you to powerbomb or suplex the monsters you’ve beaten black and blue with your fists.
And who’s doing all these performative wrestling moves? A schoolgirl who’s obviously too young to be thrown into the middle of a Silent Hill-esque setting, that’s who.
The Scariest Love Story of 2026
The game’s plot is very simple: You are what looks like a middle schooler who ends up in a place covered by heavy fog called Doll Town, presumably for a part time job at a convenience store. Disregarding the plausibility of that kind of thing from happening, especially considering that our protagonist, Yumi, came around still wearing her school uniform, you immediately cross paths with a local who gives you a tour of the town.
Introducing herself as Frangin, she guides you to the convenience store whose owner entrusted you the keys with, all the while talking about how the town has fallen into disrepair. Apparently, the town used to work for a craftsman who made very realistic, life-sized dolls. They’re so realistic, in fact, that some of them would stare at you as you walked down the street…
Upon arriving at the convenience store, however, you realize that you weren’t just seeing things. There, you encounter dolls that not just move, but attack! And, as you would totally expect from a middle-schooler who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly, you manage to fend off the monster by… squaring up and beating it down with your bare fists. To add to the drama (and possible trauma), you suddenly find a dead body (doll) in the convenience store freezer!
Thus begins an unlikely but totally true tale of a tragic romance between two young girls, which felt completely shoehorned in due to how abrupt its introduction was, by the way. And surprisingly, the backplot itself is rather decent. The main problem is that there ain’t much to work with.
Almost Impressive Character Impermanence
One of the most pressing issues with the story is that none of the characters besides you, Frangin, the two girls (Mio and Tsumugi) who caused Doll Town to become more like Ghost Town, and the main antagonist, Reina, stayed long enough to make their contribution to the story significant. For example, the convenience store owner who left his business to you and is likely the main reason you’re there in the first place? Never mentioned again after the first 10 minutes of the game.
There are even worse examples with different circumstances, like the supposed wife of the doll craftsman who only ever appeared a couple of times; one was as an unceremoniously-done boss fight (where you can stunlock her to death), and another as an apparition in a flashback for absolutely no reason. But has she ever spoken even once? Nope. What’s her part in the story, then? No idea.
This makes any contribution they provide to the plot basically moot. So regardless of what kind of developments the story tries to pull off, the lack of ink in the pen just makes the writing incoherent. Futile, in other words—much like its gameplay.
Throws Too Few Hands
Just like the recent admittedly weird but overall well-executed action(!) horror game Silent Hill f, Welcome to Doll Town is also one. But instead of something close but not entirely like a soulslike, the latter is more like a brawler where you can square up and “throw hands” with sentient dolls.
There’s not much to talk about the combat, though, besides the fact that you can also perform eyebrow-raising WWE finishers like powerbombs or suplexes once you stagger them. That’s because there’s only like six or so battles in this game; less if you know exactly where to go and avoid the extra ones.
Fortunately, it does have boss fights. One. Near the beginning. And you can stunlock it by mashing the attack button.
Now, one of the reasons why Welcome to Doll Town caught people’s attention in the first place was because of how often it marketed its thematically inappropriate combat, alongside being able to gangnam style over their cold, dead bodies. Understandably, there was an expectation that there would be a lot of fights where you can style on the horrors minding their own business.
But because there’s so few enemies to begin with, you can’t even indulge yourself in the one feature that makes combat even remotely worth engaging in. It feels empty, almost contrived, much like the town itself.
A Ghost Town in More Ways Than One
Welcome to Doll Town wears its Silent Hill inspiration on its sleeve. Everything from the thick fog surrounding the region, the way the dolls move, and even the annoying indoor camera angles, are all very reminiscent of the classic series.
Unfortunately, unlike Silent Hill, which managed to weaponize desolation and emptiness into a form of horror in itself, Welcome to Doll Town’s lack of features just makes it feel… just empty. Like, there’s no tension when you try walking on the trail less traveled, no sense of discomfort when you enter a new room, and certainly no fear when facing enemies.
The reason why is simple: Doll Town really just has nothing in it. There’s only a handful of enemies in the entire region, only a couple of puzzles to solve, only one NPC who you could have a conversation with… It doesn’t even make any attempt to use that to its advantage besides just one rather ineffective moment out of the entire one-plus hours of a run.
Even Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau had better jumpscares, despite the fact that the ghosts are also wearing kevlar.
Merely Existing is Not Enough
Now, you might think we’ve already gone past the worst bits of the game after all of that. But that’s not true, for we haven’t even talked about its audio yet.
If I were to describe Welcome to Doll Town’s audio in just a couple of words, it would be “an afterthought.” Nothing about it really stands out and, in fact, it falls into the very rare cases of audio making things worse for itself.
The most striking example of this is during the middle of the game. After getting the Janitor’s ID, you can now access the school, but have to start at the basement in order to open the main doors and let your companion NPC come through.
During the following puzzle segment, there was this one jumpscare where a doll suddenly appears behind you alongside the classic loud sound, like someone accidentally pressing a piano key. Unfortunately, it does nothing to heighten the event because even prior to all of this, you’d have been exposed to multiple instances of dolls moving off-screen. That in itself is already creepy, especially since for them to move in on you is a rarity. The sound, however, just ends up feeling like the scare is being shoved down your throat.
The game’s music doesn’t do it much favor, either. Sure, the hollow droning BGM of the town is quite good at setting the tone, but everything else feels like it’s actively trying to sabotage the progress it makes. Take for example the music used during a later escape section. For some reason, it used a very groovy piece reminiscent of those in suave detective movies. Suspenseful? Far from it. Tense? Not even close.
It does sound nice, though, not gonna lie. But overall, it feels more like they were selected to fit the scenario, without much attention to whether it would fit the entire game.
And yes, I do understand that none of this should be taken seriously. After all, how could you do so to a game where the protagonist is an underaged girl who boxes monster dolls before powerbombing them to the ground and dancing on their graves? But if so, the dissonance between the audiovisuals and themes could have been played up even better. For example, they could have used far more niche, chuckle-inducing horror sound effects than the cliche, overused ones currently in the game.
It’s such a tragic combination of halfhearted measures on what could have been a great horror comedy.
Is Welcome to Doll Town Worth It?
It Actually Merits Consideration
Despite my excitement for its release, getting what’s effectively a demo for a cent short of thirteen dollars felt nothing short of disappointing. Undoubtedly, this is the kind of title that won’t live long enough in your memory to make the money spent worth it at all.
But despite my many misgivings, I don’t think the game is as empty as its content implies. The developer is obviously committed to adding whatever he feels like to it. And for a game that isn’t meant to be taken seriously in the first place, I do think that’s an admirable trait to have. I mean, it already has Persona references in it and the like.
At the end of the day, while I can’t recommend this to anyone, I do know that this will appeal to certain people. And if they can afford it, why not?
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
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| $12.99 |
Game8 Reviews
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Welcome to Doll Town Product Information
 |
|
| Title | WELCOME TO DOLL TOWN |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 20, 2026 |
| Developer | Bad Wish Games |
| Publisher | Bad Wish Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Horror, Comedy, Action |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | N/A |
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