My Haunted Doll

I have a soft spot for the kind of game that fits inside a lunch break and still manages to leave something behind. My Haunted Doll is exactly that kind of object: small, handmade, slightly rough around the edges, and earnest in a way that bigger productions rarely bother to be. Anamik Majumdar built this solo, handling all the graphics, animation, character design, and programming by himself, outsourcing only the music. That fact alone sets the tone for what you should expect: craft over polish, intention over production value. You play as Mary, a museum curator with a weakness for antique oddities, who brings home a cursed 19th-century doll and promptly watches her life unravel. Poltergeist activity, misplaced objects, nightmarish illusions, demons lurking in corridors. The structure is a top-down 2D exploration loop: comb the multi-floor museum building for paranormal clues, solve the puzzles hidden inside its dark rooms, survive the things that react when you get too close. The atmosphere leans retro and pixel-styled, and honestly the low-fi aesthetic works in the game's favor. Flickering darkness in a small sprite-art museum can feel surprisingly oppressive when the sound design is doing its job. Here is where I have to be honest with you about scope. The community itself describes it as a simple, short horror experience that works within its asking price, and that is precisely the right framing. The playtime sits at roughly half an hour for a full run. There are jumpscare moments, a handful of mini-games and puzzles to break up the walking segments, and a single narrative thread to follow to its conclusion. Do not arrive expecting branching story paths, replayable threat systems, or survival mechanics that demand meaningful resource decisions. What you get instead is mood delivery, a clear beginning and end, and the quiet satisfaction of watching a solo developer commit genuinely to a creepy folk legend. The weaknesses are predictable for a one-person project at this price tier: the writing is functional rather than evocative, the environmental variety is limited to the building's floors and a small number of connected locations, and the horror relies more on visual interruption than dread accumulation. If atmospheric slow-burn is what you came for, this is not the right game. But if you are the kind of player who finds something worth respecting in a micro-project that knows exactly how much story it is telling and stops when it is done, My Haunted Doll rewards that generosity. Linux support is included natively, which is a small but real consideration for players on that platform.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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