Warning: Due to the nature of the work, spoilers are unmarked.
open/close all folders
The Owner
The Player Character, owner of the dollhouse, and maker of the sentient dolls who live in it.
- Abusive Parent: To whoever becomes The Unfavorite. The owner will ignore them in favor of their chosen toy, while heaping presents on the one who won them over. If the not-favored toy does anything to upset the favorite, the owner cruelly punishes them with no regard for their feelings.
- Ambiguous Gender: The owner is only referred to with singular they/them pronouns and is never shown on-screen, likely because they are supposed to represent the player.
- Big Bad: The owner is shown to be the one responsible for destroying Dahlia and Huxley's friendship by playing favorites, leading to one killing the other.
- Control Freak: They are only concerned with having total control over their toys. When Dahlia or Huxley inevitably murder the other, the owner is only disappointed that things got out of their control.
- Even Evil Has Standards: A subverted example. While the narration suggests the owner finds Huxley's murder of Dahlia "cruel", they soon brush it aside.
- Everyone Calls Them Barkeep: Whatever their real name is, the dolls only call them "the owner". They also own the dollhouse and the sentient dolls.
- Hate Sink: In contrast to both Dahlia and Huxley, who are both portrayed sympathetically (the latter moreso than the former), the owner is portrayed as a sadistic Control Freak with no actual care for either one of them in general, and is the vilest character in the game.
- Karma Houdini: While they never quite succeed in keeping the dollhouse under their control, in no ending do they receive punishment for murdering many toys beforehand and directly causing Dahlia and Huxley to end up at each other's throats. Justified as the Owner is so beyond the tiny dolls they control that there is no conceivable way that they could be punished or even resisted.
- Parental Favoritism: As much as their Living Toys, their creations, can be considered their children. In the backstory, Dahlia was the favorite, and the owner would kill any toy that sufficiently upset her. In the present, they can either continue favoring Dahlia or make Huxley the new favorite, taking the side of whoever they pick in the inevitable arguments.
- Pragmatic Villainy: They give several gifts to the dolls, not out of kindness, but instead as part of their experiment.
- Unseen Evil: The owner is never shown on screen- even their hand is only described in text. This initially seems to make them a Featureless Protagonist, but actually serves to make them more sinister when their cruel nature is revealed. The owner is very much the mysterious abomination of this semi-Cosmic Horror Story.
- Vague Age: Since we never see them, it is ambiguous if they are a child, teen, or adult. They could be a child since they own a dollhouse, but it is questionable if a child would have the knowledge to be able to create life from scratch. The only clue we get is that Dahlia's journal reveals they've had her since sometime in the 1900s and the present events occur in the 2020s. It's possible the dates were inaccurate, though.
- Villain Protagonist: The owner is the player character who makes the choices that move the story along, but is a cruel Control Freak who only sees the toys as, well, toys to be used and thrown away, and is the one who destroys the friendship between Dahlia and Huxley. Notably, every one of their choices will either do nothing substantial or screw over their creations- there is no route where they show mercy or genuine kindness.
Dahlia
A gothic Lolita doll and the owner's favorite. She has a cheery attitude, which initially gets on the nerves of Huxley.
- Alas, Poor Villain: As horrible as she is in both routes, her deaths carry a certain level of tragedy. Not only was she intentionally isolated by the owner, having no one to talk to for who knows how long, her diary implies that the owner slowly gaslit her into becoming more compliant and dependent on them. In the end, she's just as much of a victim of the owner as Huxley and Wisker.
- Apologetic Attacker: Before she kills Wisker in the route Huxley is favored, she apologizes to him.
- Asshole Victim: She is murdered by Huxley at the end of the Dahlia route. It happens the night right after she makes the owner rip out Huxley's spring and then banishes him back to his box again, though it is still played up as an Alas, Poor Villain due to the owner encouraging her bad behavior.
- Attention Whore: She craves the owner's attention, as shown in the route Huxley is favored- she goes insane with envy trying to get the owner to pay attention to her again.
- Bad Liar: She lies to Huxley in the route he's favored that she broke his cane "accidentally", which he doesn't buy as it's fairly clear she did it intentionally.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: In both routes, she is initially nice to Huxley, who serves as her new friend, but lets her jealousy get the better of her and switches to being a jerk to him, potentially even killing him in one route.
- Bullying the Disabled: In the Dahlia route, she does this to a horrific extreme. First she calls Huxley "broken" in an argument, then when he refuses to back down, she calls for the owner and says they should take away Huxley's Spring Coil (which is like a prosthesis for him). She then makes him crawl all the way back down to his box, as she is of the opinion that he doesn't deserve an actual bed anymore.
- Condescending Compassion: Dahlia's kindness towards Huxley is only because she pities him for being "broken" and unloved, unlike her, the owner's favorite. If the owner starts paying more attention to Huxley, Dahlia's kind facade crumbles rather quickly and she starts to demean and put down Huxley out of jealousy.
- Creepy Doll: In the Huxley route, she gradually turns into a Yandere after being deprived of affection by the owner and eventually kills both Huxley and Wisker.
- Driven to Suicide: In the Huxley route she sets fire to the house after killing Wisker and Huxley, then silently takes a seat in the attic and waits for the flames to consume her. Whether or not she succeeds is up to the player.
- It's All About Me: This is how Huxley views her in the route he's favored; he tells her, "You never care about anyone but yourself". He has a point too, as Dahlia's problem with him in that route is that he's getting all the attention she thinks she is entitled to from the owner, and that she dislikes how Wisker enjoys spending time with Huxley more than spending time with her.
- Never My Fault: She is unwilling to admit in either route that she's done anything wrong and reacts with spiteful sadism whenever Huxley pushes back. In the Dahlia route she requests the owner to take Huxley's spring away, while in the Huxley route she breaks Huxley's cane and refuses to apologize, insisting that it was an accident.
- Psycho Knife Nut: When she snaps in the Huxley route, she takes out a (toy) knife and stabs Huxley- and later Wisker- to death with it.
- Unreliable Expositor: Her diary entries devolve into insanity the more Huxley reads, coinciding with her slow Sanity Slippage.
- Yandere: Towards the owner. She is very insecure about her position as the favorite and antagonizes Huxley when she thinks he is getting in the way of that position. In the Huxley route, this culminates in her stabbing him with a knife to death.
Huxley
A sad clown puppet introduced by the owner to give Dahlia a new friend. His sour demeanor clashes with the always happy Dahlia.
- Deadpan Snarker: His sense of humor often goes in this direction. His snark gets gradually less relaxed and more personal as his and Dahlia's arguments get worse.
- Death Seeker: In the Dahlia route. After he murders Dahlia, he doesn't show much concern over being caught red-handed by the owner and even subtly goads them into breaking him next. If the owner does decide to break him, they muse that it's probably what he wanted anyway.
- Disabled Snarker: He has no legs due to being a handpuppet and relies on a spring to get around. He also has a very deadpan sense of humor.
- The Dog Bites Back: In both routes he eventually gets tired of Dahlia's constant emotional, verbal and psychological abuse and calls her out for her selfishness. In the Dahlia route this goes even further, as Dahlia making the owner take his spring away and forcing him to sleep in the box he hated makes him snap and he ends up killing her.
- Face–Heel Turn: He starts out as a sour, but kind soul who just wants to get along with Dahlia. But if the Owner decides to ignore him and spoil Dahlia, he eventually snaps and murders the latter.
- Half the Man He Used to Be:
- Deciding to break him as punishment for killing Dahlia has the owner rip him in half.
- In his own route Dahlia cuts his entire body in half down the middle.
- I Die Free: Implied by his demeanor at the end of the Dahlia route. He makes a rather half-hearted attempt at becoming the new favorite after getting caught, but it has a certain level of spite to it and he can't resist rubbing it in the owner's face that Wisker has escaped, and that killing Huxley won't bring back Dahlia.
- Mundane Luxury: He gets rather emotional when the Owner makes a gift specifically for him in his preferred route, and blows up at Dahlia when she breaks it.
- Perverse Puppet: In the Dahlia route, he eventually snaps and breaks Dahlia's face in, placing a part of it on his own, to make the owner love him instead.
- Pet the Dog: Even in the Dahlia route where he goes off the deep end, he bears no ill will toward Wisker, and openly hopes that he managed to escape the dollhouse.
- Revenge: In the route Dahlia is favored, he kills her out of revenge for her bullying him.
- Ungrateful Bastard: According to the narration in the route he's favored, Huxley doesn't thank the owner for giving him a puzzle. Downplayed, as Huxley didn't even know it was from the owner to begin with. Granted, given what the owner is like, they're not really owed any thanks anyway.
- Yandere: To the owner in the Dahlia route. He eventually snaps from all the favoritism heaped by the owner on Dahlia, kills her, and tries to become the new favorite of the owner.
Wisker
A bunny doll and Dahlia's initially only friend before Huxley came along.
- And I Must Scream: He's just as sentient as Dahlia and Huxley, but is treated as little more than a pet due to having no mouth and thus being unable to speak. Huxley calls the owner out on this in the Dahlia route, pointing out that if the owner cared anything for Wisker they wouldn't have let Dahlia undermine his personhood like she did.
- Expressive Ears: When he's unhappy, his ears move downwards.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": He's a bunny doll and his name is based on "whisker", which rabbits have in Real Life.
- Opt Out: By the end of the route where Dahlia is favored, Wisker has evidently completely left the house just to get away from Dahlia and Huxley's feud.
