“The Doll Shop” by Atelier Sentô (Cécile Brun & Olivier Pichard), Emeric Durdos, Dimitri Mazy, Baptiste Godier, Clément Lavarenne, Coralie Magère, Yoan Vernet, Adrian Malfatti, Manon Salomon, Ambre Sedogbo, Max Simoneau, Hugo Aubert, Mylène Aubry, Maxence Augereau, Augustin Cagnat, Julie Gouedart Lafeuille, Anaïs Linkowski, Aude Marc-Martin, Laetitia Milh, Clémence Noël, Louis Sorbon, Aurore Sole & Dorian Touchet.
“Day after day, in this desolate village, I take care of my dolls. They are my family. The people here [would not] understand. But [you are] not like them. […] If I tell you my secret… [You will not] be afraid.”
In art and media, dolls are often described as kind of beautiful, but also creepy artifacts. Especially in horror movies those toys act mostly as the haunted vessels or reincarnations of evil spirits, like Chucky from “Child’s Play”. However, often the story of the people who create or collect them remains untold. Not so in “The Doll Shop”, where you take over one of these personalities.
Here you run a little shop in the heart of a tiny village, where you repair delicate porcelain dolls. Of course, business is running slow, as not many people are still around; but those who still live here seem to share a strong sense of community and thereby you are able to do a living. Everyone knows everyone over here. And that is the reason why the village is even now, months after it happened, shook up. What it is, you might ask now. A girl just disappeared off the face of earth in Summer. The perpetrator was not found.
What is the connection of the event to your character and your doll shop? That is difficult to explain without spoiling the whole experience in advance, so you better prepare yourself a hot beverage and get ready to rouge and restore some fragile dolls, to complete your butterfly collection, to eat some ramen with a childhood acquintance for dinner and to find out about the true nature of yourself. One playthrough might not be enough, though, as “The Doll Shop” will not only fascinate you with its wonderful watercolor visuals, but also intrigue you with three different endings. [PLAY]
