Withering Rooms was an unexpectedly devious and absorbing slice of dollhouse action-RPG horror. As such, I’ve been looking forward to Withering Realms, the standalone sort-of-sequel, which launches in early access today.

The new game takes place in the 1920s, following the ‘premature’ end of World War 1 thanks to an occult catastrophe. You play a ghost child, clinging to the shoulders of a living marionette. The marionette is a real fright, its body a coatful of springs and hinges, its face a one-eyed rictus: it reminds me of certain scenes from Phil Tippett’s stop motion masterpiece Mad God and also, of Curly from Mouthwashing. You wouldn’t accept if that thing offered you a piggyback. But it is pretty handy in a fight.

The developers, Moonless Formless, summarise exploration and combat as “top-down Zelda meets Bloodborne”. The game’s unlockable areas are a gothic stew of swamps, forests, caves, rancid estates, and rundown, flowering graveyards. They are absolutely chocabloc with monsters, ranging from relatively bearable mad chambermaids to some kind of flatscreen television made out of eyeballs. The Doll takes it all in their stride. You can replace your minion’s right arm with such arcane implements as rocks on chains and candlesticks that belch fireballs. You can also shoot spells from the Doll’s back.

If you tire of your valiant steed’s lipless grin, and/or getting chopped to giblets by manky bogtrotters with huge heads, you can also ride around on the shoulders of “daring freelance investigator Althea Crossley”.

Althea isn’t so hot at fighting, but she’s a dab hand at sneaking around, picking locks and interrogating people. She’s also your ticket into the town of Penwyll, the game’s central location, which has shops where you can buy new murderparts for the doll. The devs characterise the Althea side of the game as “a mixture of 3/4 top-down and classic survival horror ‘fixed camera’ vantage points.”

You can visit each location you unlock at day or night. Things get nastier after dark, but there may also be plot secrets to uncover.

The early access build of Withering Realms already lets you play from “start to credits”, with an estimated length of 15-42 hours based on playtests. It includes around 50 weapons, around 70 talismans and over 110 monsters. During the early access period, the devs plan to add support for additional languages, more endgame stuff and game modes, plus the usual fixes and tweaks. Read more on Steam.