Everything is not Doki Doki in the Literature Club
With Halloween nearing I always try to watch a few campy horror movies or invest in a short game full of jump scares, but what I got myself into this year was exceptionally different.
Doki Doki Literature Club at first glance looks like a run of the mill sub-par anime dating sim, which looks worse due to the fact that it's a free download on Steam. At first glance why was a game that looks this cute showing up under the Horror tag alongside Cute, Romance, Dating Sim, Visual Novel, Anime..... Violent, Gore, Psychological Horror. Quite the interesting mix... I look a little further and see that it is ranked "Overwhelmingly Positive" and at the time of me writing this had a 97% positive rating over an astounding 12,125 reviews. The mix of tags and positive reviews was enough for me to give it a chance. One of the first things I note on loading up the game is the disclaimers you must agree to before starting a game.
At this point the game already has me. I haven't even started yet so I want to see this through to the end. Let me start by saying I will try to be as vague as possible here in the hopes that if you chose to play this little gem, it would spoil as little as possible. The characters on the load screen are the only 4 girls you, as the protagonist, will interact with during the game. Just from their appearance you can likely guess the standard anime tropes they would fall into you. You have the happy go lucky childhood friend, the book reading dandere, cute tsundere, and athletic, popular, and beautiful club president. It starts with the feeling that it's a story that we've all heard many times before. The decision making begins by writing poems to share during literature club -- you essentially choose your romantic pursuits by picking the words to appear in your poem you believe would appeal to your desired girl. This is continued while you slowly learn more about each girl through their poems and writing styles for the first hour or hour and a half of the game. At this point I thought that the tags and warnings were a joke and the literature club would have met my fears of being a generic dating sim, but then things start to get dark in a hurry.
The second half of the game escalates quickly into a sense of hopelessness where I questioned each decision before and after I made them and hesitated at every turn. While it does have a jump scare here and there, I felt more like I was getting played more than I was playing the game. As the decisions mount, I could only wish to go back to the start to determine the error in my ways, but this desire was pitted against the need to see how it all plays out. I wanted answers, but questioned myself and the world more than ever. I was uncomfortable, I was easy, and at times I got the chills. The music I initially thought was overly repetitive warped in a way that added to my anxiety. Without spoiling any plot, I will say that the game itself is one of the most unique visual novels, or games in general, that I have ever played in terms of end game play and I believe it deserves recognition on a creative level even if it's own brand of horror doesn't impress you.
Overall Doki Doki has my highest recommendations as a free indie game and I look forward to future developments from Team Salvato. Total game play can range in time depending on how quick of a reader you are, but the entire experience took me about 4 hours so pretty short, but highly satisfying for something of this length. If you decide to jump in, don't watch any videos and avoid all spoilers if possible - even writing what I have I feel like I've built a certain expectation that I didn't have when playing.
Sit down, open your mind, and enjoy your time as the newest member of the Literature Club
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SPOILER WARNING: Don't read this comment until you've reached the credits
Just finished it today. As someone who is somewhat into Visual Novels, I can assure you there are quite a bit of VNs that have the same gimmick of DDLC; some of them are even kamige, which I won't name here so as to not spoil them. In fact, both of the major plot twists (the heroine "knows" and cutesy things turning dark) are the main theme of two very famous kamige.
My main problem with DDLC is that the twists are telegraphed waaaay too much. As soon as Monika drops the second "Writing Tip" it becomes clear what's going on. And including the trigger warning at the beginning didn't help either.
That said, I don't want to give the impression that I didn't like it. On the contrary, the big surprise for me was the realization that the game is actually nothing but a huge set-up for whatever Team Salvato is going to release in 2018. I didn't expect all the lore in .chr files. At first I thought it was going to be just a "spooky" ARG, but when you analyze it carefully, you come up with some frightening tidbits of information.
From everything we know the info is hinting at human experimentation, occult symbolism (remember Yuri's books had an eye on the cover, probably the All-Seeing Eye?), clinical torture, sexual abuse, higher states of consciousness, weaponization of psychic powers, manchurian candidates and of course mind control. There are very strong hints to suggest that Monika is some kind of test subject which managed to escape from who-knows-where and is unable to control her powers (like this doc says).
Essentially what I'm saying is that Team Salvato is trolling us: no way they spent two years making just a 4 hours long VN in Ren'Py. This is just one massive set-up for whatever they're gonna unleash in 2018.
This may be the most insightful comment I've ever seen on here. Truly thank you for the thoughtfulness of this one. I haven't played many VNs myself so I'm curious as to the other's in the genre you would recommend with a dark twist like this.
You also got me really hyped about what's coming next, I haven't heard anything about Team Salvato before and clearly have not looked into it as much as you. Again, thanks for bringing this to my attention. And I completely missed though links, I'm appreciating this more the more I learn about it :)
Trust me, I really cannot name other VNs like this, not without ruining the surprise for you. The only one I can name is Saya no Uta because the game gets dark in the very first seconds, so you're not really spoiled for knowing that one. It's also on the short end, about the same length as DDLC, so it's not a massive 40 hours long VN like Clannad.
What you can do however is take a recommendation chart from here, pick a random game in it and play it. The very first one is pretty good: you can pick any game in the blue field, you cannot go wrong. There are at very least 3 VNs in there which have the same twist as DDLC. There are also nukige (basically porn games) like Wanko to Kurasou in there, but if you can withstand the adult content even those games have twists that can be real tearjerkers.
Have fun.
P.S.: Keep in mind that most VNs have the One True Route, which basically means that after you complete the game, a final route unlocks which reveals all the secrets of the game. You may want to use a spoiler-free walkthrough if you have problems with these kind of games.
Awesome, thank you for the recommendations. I've 'played' Narcissu and enjoyed it immensely as a kinetic (soundtrack is incredible) and have seen the anime adaptations of Higurashi, Shuffle, Tsukihime, and Fate Stay. My problem approaching a VN is kind of as you mention in the first paragraph, I just no longer have the time to put 40 hours into something so I appreciate the first recommendation a lot.
Looking into Doki Doki more after your post I found this on reddit which is pretty in depth if you haven't seen it. You definitely got me more interested in this than I was before haha. https://www.reddit.com/r/ARG/comments/71z2pt/doki_doki_literature_club_has_more_to_it_than_we/
img credz: pixabay.com
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