Genre: Adventure Casual Indie Mystery Visual Novel

Developer: Child-Dream

Publisher: Degica

Release Date: Apr 20, 2017

Sometimes a novel has a premise that, while seeming odd or weird to one person, may peak another person’s interest. It is this hidden law for all visual novels, so when I find out the storywriter from one of my favorite PS3 games wrote the story for a visual novel, I just had to check It out: Scar of the Doll. Scar of the Doll is a dark mystery visual novel developed by Child-Dream, later released by Degica, that while having some excellently written story and solid music choices, suffers from a slew of other problems.

Just like our main character hits that train to Tokyo, the story hits us right from the start with strong emotions to help build the relation we seek to mend. We, the reader, follow through the eyes of Asumi, a girl whose sister mysteriously went missing just a few months before, and while she did bide her time, she has now decided to travel to Tokyo to seek out more information regarding her disappearance. With apartment key in hand, a set of directions, and a little knowledge, Asumi sets off to begin her personal search – but the road before her is initially barricaded as when attempting to find out information from her sister’s classmate at college, she is not even listed as a student in her program. I will end the synopsis here due to the rest of the story and how it goes is based on the reader’s choices, but Hidehisa Miyashita does an excellent job here once again bringing the story to life, something I can respect as wide open as a visual novel can be sometimes.

While I do think Miyashita’s writing here is well done and very vivid, similar to that of Folklore, there is always one or two things I find lacking in the stories Miyashita writes. The first one is pacing, more so that the pacing of the story tends to go all over the place. This is a big factor in Scar of the Doll as the story tends to jump around from calm one second, to fearful and grim the next, without much in the way of context or reasoning why. The other one I found was Asumi herself. Asumi, while she has this really well put together backstory and ideas behind her, comes off rather bland, and sometimes dull, as she becomes like a hound dog, just searching for clues behind her sister’s disappearance, and not really caring about much else. Now I do want to give some props to the design of the story, as at one point you get told to save often due to the nature of the novels choices can get you killed – and you will get killed, a lot the first time reading through, with each death being from a different method.

To the eyes, Scar of the Doll’s presentation came off as archaic in a sense, both visually and musically, which while not a good thing all the time, did work to a point. Visually, I found Scar of the Doll to be very picture oriented, with the only real type of design addition being the character looks hand drawn. The backgrounds look like someone had taken a photograph and using some digital software, blurred it out, which is not too far off from visual novels of this time period where using pictures as inspiration for actual backgrounds was a common trend. Unfortunately, this also makes the novel feel older and was a misstep in my opinion, as it made the novel feel visually dated. Character art on the other hand is one of the better elements visually as, while it does follow a similar art style to the backgrounds, these characters were hand drawn and it shows as the linework is well done.

The sounds of Scar of the Doll can be described as both scenic and traditional, something most visual novels do not attempt. The soundtrack is split into two categories, the natural sounds like that of the street, the tension of the buildings, sounds of this nature. The other side is more traditional music like the classical piano and winds instruments, with some chimes thrown in every so often depending on the scenes. This makes the soundtrack more memorable in ways, but I do feel that it can also divide the soundtrack as neither side of the soundtrack is particularly interesting. The sound effects, while limited in use, do get use correctly but can be lost in some situations.

Overall, Scar of the Doll has a well written story with an interesting premise backing it up, and some memorable music to match – but with pacing issues, antiquated visuals, and the split soundtrack make for a less than worthwhile setup in the end. A well written story, a challenge to survive, interesting story premise, use of the picture oriented backgrounds, nicely drawn character art, and a memorable split soundtrack make for an interesting setup for a visual novel.

Pros:

Story is well written and holds an interesting premise

A challenge to survive what the novel throws at you

Usage of picture oriented backgrounds was nice throwback

The character art is well drawn and contrast the backgrounds

The memorable spit style soundtrack

Cons:

Stories pacing can be all over the place at times

Asumi herself does not become particularly interesting

The novel can look visually dated due to the blur effects

While memorable, the soundtrack on either side can lack interest at times

DarkLunarDude gives Scar of the Doll a Drastik Measure 5.9 out of 10.0 (59)

For the price of $9.99 on Steam, I can only recommend this visual novel to a reader who wants a well written mystery novel with a challenge to it, as this novel will challenge you to make your choices carefully to live another day.