Welcome to Doll Town

A wrestling match wrapped in a ghost story

"Welcome to Doll Town" is a short, PS1-styled horror game about a schoolgirl who fights possessed dolls using pro-wrestling moves while a much darker story about bullying and loss plays out around her. The premise landed with a lot of reviewers precisely because of that tonal collision. "Stunner, suplex and powerbomb? Count me in!" wrote one player, who added after finishing it: "This is a one-man Dev game. I've supported this since I saw the first finishing move." Another reviewer who doesn't normally play horror games made the same case for the hook: "I don't play horror games but IDM being the monster against the ghosts, dolls, or whatever." The atmosphere drew separate, consistent praise across the sample regardless of how a reviewer felt about everything else: "Bangin' atmosphere, art style and sound design were mostly really good," wrote one player who ultimately did not recommend the game, and a positive reviewer who wanted a soundtrack release put it just as plainly: "The music is so great, I really wish there will be a soundtrack in the future because it adds a lot to the experience."

The gap between the trailer and the download

The single most consistent complaint across both positive and negative reviews is that the version many people bought didn't match what months of pre-release marketing had shown them. One player summarized the disappointment directly: "I saw this being advertised for months on Instagram and thought it looked promising with it's PS1 era vibes and horror look... It's listed as an action game, but that is a stretch. The Wrestlemania style combat you see in the advertising as a very key element only takes place 5ish times as there are like no enemies." Another reviewer who had followed the developer's posts made the same point about a specific missing area: "def a cool game wish it hade more story wanted to see the factory and a few other spots on the map." A more detailed account listed several specific cuts: "Notable missing features from the social media advertisements - No skateboarding, no emotes beyond the initial 4 you have(despite having more in ads), no difficulty selection." Even a reviewer who ultimately recommended the game noted the same shortfall in gentler terms: "I liked the story for the most part. The game is pretty short. I'd still say that premise is interesting but I wish that there were little more combat situations."

That mismatch extended, in multiple independent accounts, to the game's cosmetic shop. One recommending reviewer flagged it as a design choice that soured an otherwise decent experience: "Side thing, but it kinda rubs me the wrong way to have a paid DLC outfit on release day that is 1/3 the price of the game. That should have just been included in the game for free already." A negative review went further, tying the pricing directly to how little the outfits are actually seen given how briefly the player controls the character who wears them: "people to pay $99+ for skins that are WORTHLESS given that less than half of the playtime is from the perspective of the "protagonist" (genuinely more of a side character)." That complaint about expensive cosmetics for a character players spend limited time controlling is echoed by several other reviewers independently.

Combat that doesn't ask much of you

Where the marketing sold "Doll Town" on its wrestling-move combat, the reviews that actually engage with the fighting describe something thin. One recommending reviewer who documented the pros and cons carefully wrote: "As fun as I found the combat...it was incredibly sparse. I think I can count on my hands how many times you fight in this game." A separate positive review reached an almost identical count independently: "The entire game has 4 combat encounters, 3 of which are with the same enemy, but they can all be stunlocked and button mashed". A third reviewer's account of the game's single boss fight matched that same "mash and win" pattern: "It was a pretty jarring difficulty spike, especially because it built my hopes up for more boss fights that would have required craftier problem solving! ...I learned you can stun-lock her by just...mashing the attack button." A fourth, more critical review used the exact same "stun lock" language to describe both the boss and the regular enemies: "The regular enemies are braindead and no problem to kill. The boss? Either you get the first hit and juggle the boss until they die, or they do the same to you and kill you in a couple hits."

Bugs, cameras, and controllers

Technical complaints show up independently across a wide range of playtimes and platforms. A player who otherwise enjoyed the game reported: "really really cool game its alot of fun, but sadly its hella buggy there were atleast like 5 different bugs in the first 30 minutes were i had to restart my game and sometimes those bugs reaccured too." Softlocks specifically come up more than once: one reviewer wrote "There are bugs. I got soft locked once and had to reset to progress the game," while another described the exact trigger: "as mio leave corridor without speaking to the principle makes you change back to yumi and cant continue story unless you close and reopen the game." Camera problems were flagged by players who liked the game and players who didn't alike, with one recommending reviewer writing simply: "You can pet the cat and punch dolls and the story is really interesting, the camera sucks though and a sprint option would be really nice." Steam Deck and controller owners reported a rougher time still: one wrote that on Deck "the sensitivity makes the game almost unplayable due to how fast the camera turns. It also lacks basic options like adjusting the sensitivity or framerate of the game which is a shame."

Steam's own achievement data is consistent with a short game that a meaningful share of buyers never actually finish. "WELCOME_TO_DOLL_TOWN," presumably an early story beat, sits at 86.1%, but the two ending achievements, "ANGEL_ENDING" and "DEVIL_ENDING," sit at just 28.4% and 22.9% respectively — a little over half the playerbase combined reaching either ending of a game most reviewers describe finishing in two hours or less, a drop-off consistent with the softlocks and control frustrations reported across the sample rather than the game simply being too long to finish.

Verdict

"Welcome to Doll Town" has a real hook — wrestling moves against horror dolls, wrapped around a deliberately jarring, much darker story — and its PS1-inspired art direction and music win over reviewers on both sides of the recommendation line. But the reviews converge, independently and repeatedly, on the same shortfall: what actually shipped is thinner than what months of social media marketing promised, the combat under that atmosphere amounts to a handful of easily-won fights, and bugs, camera problems, and shaky controller support cost real playtime for a game most people finish in one sitting. Players drawn in purely by the atmosphere and the novelty of the premise, at a price that most reviewers agree is fair for a two-hour game, will likely get what they came for. Anyone expecting the fuller action game the trailers implied should adjust expectations before buying.