The 13th Doll is a fan-made followup to the 1993 FMV adventure classic The 7th Guest, which rang up more than $60,000 in a successful 2015 Kickstarter campaign. That's not much of a budget for a videogame production, but you don't have to pay volunteers, who have helped get this fan project close to the finish line. After missing a release planned for Halloween 2018, Attic Door Productions said today that it will come out, for sure this time, on Halloween 2019.
(That's October 31, by the way.)
The acting in the launch trailer looks stiff and awkward, but that's extremely on-brand for '90s FMV games in general, and The 7th Guest in particular. It looks very true to the original game (and its sequel, The 11th Hour), which tells the tale of Henry Stauf, a master toymaker and psycho killer who builds a great mansion to serve as his murder-playground and holding cell for the stolen souls of children. It's all kind of confusing, to be honest, but it was suitably creepy and the puzzles were infuriatingly obtuse, which at the time was seen as a good thing.
Whether it will continue to be seen in that light in The 13th Doll is yet to be determined: It looks very similar to its predecessor superficially, but the meat of the matter hinges on the puzzles, and whether The 13th Doll will make allowances for players who have literally hundreds of other things they could be playing and thus may not feel compelled to stare at that stupid goddamn soup can puzzle for hours on end until their eyeballs fall out. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
The 13th Doll is listed on Steam but isn't available for purchase just yet. The website at the13thdoll.com indicates that the standard edition of the game will go for $30, but it's available for pre-purchase there for $20.
