What is String Tyrant?
String Tyrant (development codename: Doll Manor) is an survival-horror game following a teenage girl, Mary, and her attempts to escape a mysterious manor where the inhabitants are either insane, or made of plastic.
Will she escape, or will she become another resident?
Where can I get it?
The game can be purchased from our itch.io page. You can also get it on Steam.
If you are a 5$ patron, there are download instructions on this (patreon-restricted) page. All 5$ patrons receive a free copy of the game.
If you are or were a 5$ patron and did not get a free copy, please contact us via the patreon, our discord, or via email.
pandemonium AT starlightstudios DAWT org
A free demo is also available. (Mediafire) (Mega.nz)
I’m Stuck and Need Help!
#1 fan and best person Klaysee wrote a guide to the game. You can find it here. It is a very good guide.
Gameplay
The game uses a text interface for overworld navigation and menus. The game is user-friendly and encourages the usage of the mouse.
The player moves and interacts with the world using the text interface, commands can be selected on the UI using the mouse if desired.
This is a survival-horror game. You’ll need to search the environment for items and weapons to defend yourself with, as well as clues about what is going on.
Your line-of-sight is limited by doors and corners, but you can hear nearby activities you cannot see. It may be a good idea to hide and let enemies pass…
Because not all of the residents of the manor are friendly.
If you do encounter an enemy, you may need to fight your way out. This is done by assembling an attack from a set of cards that are randomly selected from your “deck”. Use the “And” and “Of” cards to make the sentence longer and produce combos to deal more damage. Use similar elements to deal bonus damage or protect yourself from more hits.
Any damage you take is permanent, your HP does not regenerate but the enemies will eventually get back up. Be careful and quiet…
… or you may just end up joining the dolls forever, forced to hunt down your former friends and add them to your mistress’ collection.
Mature Themes
This is not a game for minors. It contains an oppressive atmosphere, identity death, lots of violence and danger. Mature audiences only.
Development History
In early 2019, we were making chapter 5 for Pandemonium when I realized that our mechanical doll girls weren’t quite the same sort of doll girls people usually think of when they think of dolls.
At around the same time, I developed an engine to handle text adventure inputs for a side-quest in chapter 5. It wasn’t a massively complex engine, but it was flexible and the combat was fairly fun.
At around this time, artist Koops wanted to “join” our “team”. I proposed a test of her artistic skills as well as an experiment wherein we could use the same transformation base (human to doll, doll to dressed doll) for multiple characters.
All of these factors combined to create this project, code-named “Doll Manor”.
At the end of 2019, with chapter 5 released, we finished up the remaining needed assets. The game will hopefully be completed in early 2020 (February or March, depending on several factors) and released for 5$ on itch.io and Steam, and any other distribution platform which will have us.
May I play it?
Yes! A free demo is available via our itch.io page. The full game may be purchased for 5$. If you are a 5$ patron, you will also receive a free copy.
If you are already a patron, please check this page. If you aren’t, it’s really easy to do!
If you’re too poor to afford 5$ (which is actually a thing that happens in 2020, we don’t judge because most of our team members are below the poverty line) then we also accept:
- Haikus and Poetry about how much you love the games we make, or just anything related
- Essays about your love of our work or related themes
- Short stories
- Pictures of nearby cute animals like dogs, cats, goats, horses, or anything else that’s really cute
- Fan art
- Really, anything that shows you like our work and would support us if you could
Have these things? Contact us on Discord or on the TFGS forums!
The team does reserve the right to reprint your submissions publicly if we really like them, so if you don’t want it reprinted be sure to specify that.
Pandemonium Development 