Doki Doki Literature Club – A free visual novel of horror and fourth wall shattering
1
Very few games manage to instill the sense of dread and anguish that Doki Doki Literature Club is capable of. It’s a slow burn, a game that looks like a regular dating sim, but ultimately opens up and reveals its true, twisted identity. It’s a visual novel that breaks boundaries and shatters the fourth wall to pieces, a game that only really becomes itself by the end of the first playthrough.
The scariest part of all is that Doki Doki Literature Club has all the makings of a sentient game.
It will trick you, play with you, deceive you in a way that will make you question if what you’re watching is all there is to it. Short answer: it’s not. You’re not just playing Doki Doki Literature Club – the game is also playing you.
On the surface, this is a cutesy visual novel and the first game from Team Salvato, after two years of hard work. But underneath there’s a creepy, horrific, unpredictable game that truly isn’t suitable to persons who are easily disturbed. There’s this sense of terror even in plain daylight, the anticipation of something dreadful being your worst enemy, the fear of what’s to come, and the knowledge that you are being two-timed all the way.
2
The first DDLC playthrough will seem like your regular dating sim/visual novel. You, the main character, will be asked by your long-time friend Sayori to join a literature club. Trapped by her usually cheerful and positive attitude, you decide to go along and meet the other members of the club: president Monika, Yuri and Natsuki. The idea of getting close to these cute girls is a comforting one, and you do your best, including “writing” poems, something that is new to you. This writing is a simple minigame revolving around a choice of words that are tied to each of the girl’s personalities, and will get you closer to the girl you “dedicated” the poem to. Apart from this, there’s a lot of text and a few choices here and there, mostly involving choosing the girl you want to spend time with.
3
There are a couple of interesting, clever bits of “sentient” gameplay in DDLC, including one passage where you have to choose the girl you want to help, but the mouse cursor keeps pushing for this particular name, as if some invisible force is forcing your hand. By now, the secret is already out in the open for you, but not for them, and you have to keep pushing to see where this will lead, and if you can escape it all. You’re not in control anymore, you’re a puppet being controlled by a superior power which even has the ability to delete characters from the DDLC folder and the game itself.
This is where you realize that there is something bigger going on. This isn’t just a dating sim, it’s a game with an ARG component here you’re going to deal with unexpected twists, file names and hidden, almost indecipherable content. There’s a great thread here that I recommend you to read AFTER you reached the real ending.
The second playthrough starts with glitching and the disappearance of the dead girl from the main menu, as if her existence was simply erased. Glitches will be a common thing from now on, and you’re left wondering if this won’t actually affect your computer in any unexpected way. It will, but only the DDLC folder, so don’t worry about it, you’re safe. Characters will appear glitched, music will sound distorted and text will often show up garbled and unintelligible. Further runs will make the scares and glitches even more frequent, the client seems to be bugging all over the place and at times you’ll think if it didn’t just crash altogether. Poems become little pieces of horror or just plain weird, nightmarish bits that may reveal the real intention of the force behind all this.
4
In the end, it’s not only about what you have experienced. It’s also about what you didn’t experience, as DDLC has a few secrets that hint at something larger, a story that has a lot more to it. The game code includes weird messages and twisted imagery, if you’re resourceful enough to decode them. As I was done with the game, I realized that it had quite an effect in me, despite not being a fan of the “normal” visual novel aspect from the initial couple of hours. What came after made it all worth it, and I’m still pondering about it and reading more wherever I can. Turns out that there are a few tweaks that you can make to get different results, proving that the game knows that YOU are cheating and trying to deceive it, the same exact way it did to you.
Come for the bubbly dating sim, stay for the horror. Doki Doki Literature Club is a terrifying game mostly for what it engraves in your mind. It’s not often that you’re deceived by a game and have it talking to you, the person playing it, not the player character. You’re not in control of your fate anymore, and that makes the experience much more exciting and frightful.
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Doki Doki Literature Club – A free visual novel of horror and fourth wall shattering
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