$17.99Alisa A Dollhouse Full of Horrors
Alisa is a survival horror love letter to the late 90s: pre-rendered backgrounds, tank controls, a Victorian dollhouse full of mechanical horrors, and a Royal Agent with a sabre. Explore, solve puzzles, scavenge for gears to spend in a very strange shop, and survive a mansion that does not want you to leave.
Is Alisa worth it?
Alisa is worth it if…
- you grew up on tank controls, fixed cameras and pre-rendered backgrounds, and miss them
- you like survival horror that is genuinely hard and expects you to learn from every death
- you enjoy a world that mixes gothic dread with a weird, playful sense of humour
- you would rather solve a fair puzzle than follow a marker to the next objective
Screenshots
A dollhouse that fights back
You play Alisa, an Elite Royal Agent chasing a wanted criminal through a 1920s-flavoured fantasy world. The trail ends at an old Victorian mansion, and the way out is not obvious. What is obvious: the doll-like humanoids haunting the halls are not decorative. They are fast, they come in many shapes, and some of them crawl, which is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds.
This is classic survival horror. Fixed cameras and pre-rendered backgrounds mean you never quite see the whole room, and every corner can hold something new. The mansion is split into distinct areas, each with its own look, its own enemies and its own music, from a surreal dollhouse wing to a circus. Ammunition is scarce, so every fight is a decision: spend the bullets, swing the sabre, or run.
Gears, dresses and a very odd shop
Enemies drop shiny gears, and gears are money. There is a shop with a strange sense of humour where you spend them on ammo, health, weapons and, yes, dresses. Each dress or armour set comes with its own stat boosts, so what Alisa wears genuinely changes how she plays: one outfit might speed up your reload, another shifts your style entirely.
It is a clever twist on the usual survival horror economy. Instead of only avoiding enemies to save resources, killing them becomes worth planning: figure out the cheapest way to take one down, in health and ammo, and come back for the ones you left behind. Combined with weapon load-outs you can set before heading out, every encounter becomes a small budgeting problem with teeth.
What should you know before playing?
How hard is Alisa, really?
Hard, and deliberately so. The store calls it Soulsborne difficulty, and the game means it: some bosses and segments will send you back to retry, and the opening hours are among the toughest. It rewards patience, careful resource management and a willingness to explore without saving. If you want a relaxed power fantasy, this is not it; if you want to earn your survival, it delivers.
How long is a playthrough?
Around ten to twelve hours for a first run, with surprises that keep coming until the end. Replays are worth it too: later runs add new content, and there are multiple endings to chase.
Do you need to have played the classics it honours?
No, but it helps. The design assumes you can handle fixed cameras and tank controls without a tutorial. Newcomers to old-school survival horror often bounce off the difficulty, while veterans tend to feel right at home within minutes. A more modern control option exists, though it does not make the game any gentler.
