It's been awhile since I've played a game where the narrative has really shocked me. I've been surprised and tricked, but actual shock in what I'm hearing and seeing. Weeping Doll from Oasis Games creates a wild story that is so dark and twisted that it's almost unbelievable.

The story follows a housekeeper through a creepy mansion that looks like it's been ransacked. You know something has gone wrong and it's your job to put together the pieces. As you progress through the story you start to uncover layers of unnerving subjects such as child abuse and neglect. While other games may use metaphors to dance around sensitive subjects, Weeping Doll jumps right into them.

Weeping Doll, at its core, is a puzzle game. You enter a room and have to either figure out a way to get out or find an essential item that will help you advance. The premise is awesome, but the execution falls flat because the puzzles don't require much thinking. At one point, the game gives you a tutorial on how to combine items to solve a puzzle, but you only use it that one time. There's no option of failing either, which means that there isn't really a challenge.

I also ran into quite a few major bugs in Weeping Doll, which is always unfortunate. At one point I accidentally dropped a key and it went either through the floor or under a dresser, which forced me to reload the checkpoint. After reloading the checkpoint, I had to complete the first part of the room's puzzle again, which is fine, but the piece that I needed was nowhere to be found. This meant that I had to start a whole brand new game. Luckily, I was less than 10 minutes into the game so it wasn't too much of a pain to start over.

Once I got through the beginning, I was making real progress. The atmosphere of Weeping Doll is pretty terrifying and you constantly feel like something is about to happen. Unfortunately, there are only about three real scares in the entire game. I will say this, as odd as it may sound, Weeping Doll succeeds as a great "psychological narrative." The game really got in my head and convinced me that at any moment something scary was about to happen.

The entire game is only about an hour long so you can easily finish it in one sitting, however, there is something odd about the way the game ends. Once you finish the game, you'll hear the trophy chime, but the game keeps going. You are able to walk around the house and you may think that there is more to do, but there isn't. This is sort of a byproduct of the PSVR not showing you trophies when you have it on, but there aren't any credits to inform you either. I probably spent an additional 10 minutes walking around trying to figure out what to do next, only to find out that I had finished the game once I looked at my trophy list.

Overall Weeping Doll is a short and strange game. It's currently only $9.99 on the PlayStation store so it's low-risk. An added bonus is that the trophies are incredibly easy so this may entice trophy hunters, but outside of that, there isn't much there. I do feel like it some real potential and I hope that the relatively new studio, Oasis Games continues to build and develop their games further because they definitely have a knack for crazy stories.

2.25 out of 5 Stars

Thank you to Oasis Games for providing us with the code.

Weeping Doll Review