Being a haunted doll must be difficult. You’re missing an eyeball, and your lipstick makes you look more like a cannibal than a cherub. People make faces of disgust at you in the antique mall, and you want to tell them you’re actually the unblemished soul of a 19th century nun named Eunice, but they speed away before you can. But if you were a haunted doll, you’d at least have solo developer Steelkrill Studio on your side, as its upcoming survival horror game Where Dolls Hang features real-life creepy dolls looking proudly injured.
The dolls of Mexico’s Isla de las Muñecas, the Island of the Dolls, have been through a lot over the past 80 years. Folklore suggests the bald dolls cobwebbed and nailed to the island’s trees contain the spirit of a drowned little girl, who caretaker Don Julian Santana may or may not have made up. In any case, he spent much of his life fishing plastic Barbies and babies out of the water near his home to honor her spirit. So Where Dolls Hang, which was featured in the Horror Game Awards’ recent showcase on October 5, is a tribute, too–it honors the fact that our real world is often freakier than fiction.
“Some of the doll models you’ll find were created using real photographs,” developer Steelkrill explains on Twitter. “The photographs can also be found around in the game.” An accompanying clip of first-person gameplay footage demonstrates with an image of a doll head coated completely in dirt and little pimples from raindrops. The Where Dolls Hang player then drops the photo and stares ahead; the same pimply doll head is sticking from a pike right in front of them.
“It creates an unusual connection between the game’s horrors and reality: something disturbing hanging in a room or sitting in the darkness may not have been designed entirely from imagination,” a press release says. “Somewhere in the world, there may be a real photograph behind it.” Intriguingly, that makes Where Dolls Hang a rare game that is based on a true story, since life is unknowable without art to make sense of it.
Where Dolls Hang is scheduled for a 2026 release date, and it’s available to wishlist now on Steam.
