I didn’t really know much about “Emily Wants To Play” going into the game. In fact, the only two things that I knew were that a friend recommended it to me and that I thought it was titled after a song David Bowie covered on Pin-Ups, though that turned out to be “See Emily Play” when I opened my iTunes to check. I put the game off for several months though, since it was a cheap indie title I hadn’t otherwise heard anything about. However, on August 9th “Emily Wants To Play” was released for Playstation4, so I decided to finally pick it up and just go into the game completely blind.
The story of “Emily Wants To Play” is less than original, to put it generously. It’s about a pizza delivery man who must survive until dawn while being relentlessly pursued by possessed dolls. It borrows pretty heavily from “Five Nights At Freddy’s” in this, and many other regards. Before the start of the game, a child was found mysteriously dead, and then her dolls came to life and started killing people. Again, this is a lot like “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” where children are murdered and which then cause possessed animatronics at a pizza place to life and try to kill people. I mean, seriously, the game’s developer could have at least made the player a Chinese food delivery guy or something to try and create a little more separation between the two, but “Emily Wants To Play” seems perfectly content to wear its lack of originality on its sleeve.
“Emily Wants To Play” looks about as good as you would expect a five dollar game to look. That is to say, it looks like something that someone hastily threw together with the Unity development kit. However, since the game lacks the Unity logo during start-up, I am perfectly willing to believe that the developer created their own generic boxes and lamps. The possessed child looks more like a tiny geriatric than any sort of demonic kid. The clown doll looks decent, but the other two dolls look too similar to each other for my taste. They are a man and a woman both in black formal wear. So at just a quick glance it isn’t always readily apparent which it is, though the two dolls do have some distinguishing features.
No work was put into the audio of “Emily Wants To Play.” The sound effects are all incredibly generic and lack any sort of character. Close your eyes and picture a giggling sound effect. You know the one, you’ve heard it a million times in the past. Yeah, you will hear that particular effect every couple of minutes in “Emily” and it really grates on the nerves. When there is music, it is the most generic spooky music you can imagine.
“Emily Wants To Play” has a very obvious intent with its gameplay. It clearly wants to be “Five Nights At Freddy’s” but with freedom of movement. However, it clearly fails to understand what it was that made “Five Nights” such a runaway success. Instead of that game’s slow building anxiety, we’re left with a game where we play poorly simulated children’s games with mediocre-looking dolls. Each doll has a game it plays, be it red light green light or tag. However, these games are interesting because of their elements of physical movement which does not translate well onto the Playstation. Much like in “Five Nights” whenever one of the dolls catches the player there is a scene of the doll getting in real close to the player’s face and then the game is over. However, the quality of the jump-scares in “Emily” is far lower, since the enemy design is less interesting and the sounds are far more generic.
“Emily Wants To Play” is not a very good game. You’re probably better off just playing any of the “Five Nights At Freddy’s” games, or even just listening to “See Emily Play” on loop for the forty-five minutes that this game lasts.
