Doki Doki Literature Club!

Spoilers Throughout.

Doki Doki Literature Club! achieves a level of intimacy that pushes it above most of its indie brethren. Before the game twists into the discussion of consciousness and self-awareness that it nails so well, Salvato uses his strong understanding of poetry and VN-tropes to slowly tear apart the fabric of the status-quo. It is this realization that things are terribly, terribly wrong that is so masterfully built up to, and that has stuck with me for so, so long.

It is in between the cracks of the tropey visual novel that DDLC develops into characters into real, very tragic people. Sayori's joy, Natsuki's anger, and Yuri's shyness are all peeled back and are revealed to be coping mechanisms or symptoms of deeper flaws. The player is reeled in -- asked to empathize with these three, to focus their attention on them -- and then the world is torn apart once more.

Monika is simultaneously an homage to the side characters who are deemed unworthy of screentime and agency -- and a living, breathing person. That the player can empathize with and fear Monika is a testament to Salvato's subtle and complex portrayal of reality through the lens of the fictional characters trapped in our screens.

The game and its community helped me realize my love of poetry and literature. I cherish it for its strange glimpse into the media I consume and for the impact its had on my life. An intimate, unforgettable experience.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a really embarrassing Visual Novel created by a pretentious edgelord whom I didn't know before reading. I first read this when it was brand new, found it to be one of the worst things I've ever experienced, and proceeded to witness it somehow skyrocketing in popularity afterwards. It was really strange, because noone I talked to seemed to like it. It's really sad that this gets so much attention whereas amazing Visual Novels like the behemoth Subarashiki Hibi barely got any attention in the west and only sold a few thousand.

SPOILERS from here but really, I would advice you to just spoil yourself and not waste your time with this wretched game.

DDLC basically starts out as a deliberate caricature of some kind of EVN-Galge. I'm not really sure what it is supposed to be parodying to be honest. I've read many Japanese visual novels and DDLC doesn't remind me of any of them at all in writing or content. I've read everything from charage and moege, to horror, mystery and surrealism, and even nukige. Listen to me closely here, because I'm assuming most of the fans of DDLC have no experience with VNs. THIS IS NOT INDICATIVE OF WHAT VNS ARE LIKE. The culprit is the writing which is so bland you wouldn't believe. I mean, even the blandest Moege I've tried out (Dal Segno) had more personality than this, and the characters more individual. I'm bothered by how characters act in DDLC... you can tell they are all written by the same person with his own distinct personality, and he has a long way to go to make distinctions between his characters. The only character who is a little bit different is Monika and that is because she is the source of the games gratuitous and anti-intellectual metafiction. This is the most embarrassing use of meta I've ever seen for sure. Basically what happens is that you spend barely any time in this regular caricature setting with cute girls who write poetry. Then shit hits then fan and one of the girls commits suicide. At this point, the genre shifts into a vaguely unsettling abstract horror game. Honestly, I won't fault people for at least finding it interesting if they're new to all this, but come on, be critical for a moment here. As another reviewer described, the horror is incredibly lame and reminds of SONIC.EXE (which has been panned whereas this has not, interestingly). The fourth wall breaking is so annoyingly in your face and pretentious that it just makes me feel embarrassed for the author. Compare it to other Visual Novels with elements like that, like Forest and Subarashiki Hibi and this seems like child's scribbles in comparison. I get that people think they're cool because they're reading something subversive and they think this is better because it's parodying "those dumb dating sims", aka something that might not even exist or at least is not particularly well regarded by visual novel folks... but yeah, if you're one of them, then read that sentence again. Do you get it? This doesn't really subvert anything relevant. This isn't what those things you'd call "dating sims" are actually like, unless maybe if you're playing some wretched EVN that might be popular on a stupid website like Steam. DDLC fails to even set up to start to subvert your expectations because it doesn't even know how to be a caricature. Can you really not tell how freakin' badly written this is? If you can, are you really gonna defend it saying that it's meant to be bad as if that makes it clever? Get real

Ultimately DDLC has 2 great problems.
1. The first half is too bland and horribly written and fails to establish any kind of interest in the setting, characters and story. The one good thing I can say about it is that it is definitely decidedly "off" though this is perhaps a little too subtle for some readers (maybe even unintentional? could just be bad writing seeming off) which could explain why some people, despite the triggers warnings at the start, insist that they were "surprised" later on. In that regard it dd accurately prepare me for that this is not a "normal" game, which meant that I didn't drop it instantly. That's not good enough, though, because it is incredibly tedious to get anywhere. The game has an idea, a gimmick it wants to pull off, and this gimmicks relies on investment from the player. Without said investment, anyone who experiences the usage of teh gimmick in the game (unless it's their first time ever experiencing fourth wall breaking or dark themes in anything and they have their first "whoa" moment over that) will just go "ok, and why am I supposed to care about this?" Again I will point towards Subarashiki Hibi for trying something in a similar vein, and also having a "bland" first chapter. Go read that to see just how far VNs can take this sort of thing. Then go back to DDLC and shake your head. In order for the gimmicks in the second half to "work", then there needs to be a sufficient substance and investment, in order for there to be a real "payoff". Otherwise such gimmicks ring hollow, resulting in a shallow game.
2. The horror and fourth wall breaking is incredibly juvenile, lame, and obvious. I don't get why any of this is supposed to be cool, or funny, or anything interesting, really. It's all in bad taste and it's not even so bad it's good, because if it were, then at least I would've laughed from time to time, but I never did. It was just... a very boring experience of waiting for the next silly little thing to happen. And whenever it did, it's just the same usual boring edgelord trash. Oh no, the yandere kills herself. Oh no, the loli tsundere says she gets molested by her dad. Oh no, everything is so horrible, and oh no, you have to delete the character files, and... ok, why is any of this interesting!?!?!? I don't understand why! I like things that are good! Subversive media can be so much better than this!.

I've also heard that it's a rip-off of Totono but I haven't read it so I dunno if that's true. Either way, it could just be a ripoff unintentionally because that's how obvious the ideas and gimmicks presented are. Update: Totono sucks too and this isn't exactly a rip-off but I obviously do see the similarities and why they were compared.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a good example of artistic pretension and serves as a great reminder to all creators and artists to not get ahead of themselves. If you want to freak out readers, then take better care, and create a better story first, create more interesting characters, work on your scenario seriously, work on establishment of themes, definitely work on your way with words and better yourself as a creator, THEN try to make something subversive. If you can't even get the "baseline" right then why try to be "better" than everyone else? Seriously this game isn't "upsetting" because of its themes or horror or whatever, what upsets me about is is how full of itself yet inept it is.

Man, remember this? Another game that spread like wildfire via word-of-mouth due to the gimmicks contained inside (expectation subversion, slowly opening the door, 4th wall breaking etc.).

Admittedly, it doesn't do anything new in particular, nor have much to offer once the gimmick is revealed (hence no incentive to play it again later), but the writing and pacing leading you there was was great (in that it was perfectly innocent and average) for what it needed to be, it worked on me at least. Although the real joy was pushing it to other friends and seeing their reactions :)

It may not have the same potency today, nor last much more beyond that little window of time (I don't foresee myself playing DDLC!+ anytime soon) but it was solid, if unspectacular in retrospect, made a little better by being in the moment when it was relevant, and that's perfectly fine. You kinda had to be there.

1. this game is so excited to subvert your expectations that it can't even wait for you to start the game before making it obvious you are indeed not playing a regular visual novel
2. relying so heavily on free advertising from content creators was a successful way to make your game as popular as it can be but how do you then expect this game to work at all everyone who says they fell for this is playing dumb
3. ok so its satirising dating sim visual novel anime type games ig probably supposed to be a dig at how those games capitalise off of lonely men and porn addiction but howw does it actually do that it feels like the only thing indicating that is the fact that it uses that kind of game as a front , what is the point if not that is there even meant to be one besides haa gotcha you thought it was a dating sim now ur shitting brix
4. congrats dan salvato in what seems to be an attempt to satirise how media preys on desparate men you created probably one of the most intensely creepy examples of this kind of audience i have ever seen
the "self-hating mentally ill" character and the "cutesy innocent child" character were very clearly still meant to be appealing no attempts were made to subvert those expectations besides using heavy topics to accentuate and emphasise those dangerous and unhealthy character traits

the only thing i can genuinely give this game any merit for is that some of the horror elements of the game are v effective and having to manipulate the game files to make the game progress is a genuinely rlly cool feature. its just a shame all the clear potential in the more technical aspects of the game all add up to an overly indulgent display of perversion and yet another example of vapid aimlessly self aware post-modernism

For all the effort it spends building up its characters, there really isn't much here after that first initial scare. It just doesn't really know what to do with itself after that first spook, so it just does a barrage of glitchy creepypasta tier spooks for the rest of the time and it's just not scary. It's even more polarizing considering the game's first half and how much it takes its sweet time easing you in and then letting the dark undertones rise to the surface and had it really embraced the side of its mentally ill characters as its plot it would've been a bit more interesting, I think, or at least something a little more interesting than glitchy creepypasta stuff. What doesn't help the game is how much it feels like a novelty, but the novelty is ruined by how hard it is to not know the game is off. If you weren't already mildly aware the game is something a little subversive by it's fanbase that giggles in excitement for someone to play it, then the game's countless warnings on its store pages and the games intro would and that somewhat spoils the novelty, which doesn't have much depth because the novelty is just glitchy creepypasta stuff and it's just uninteresting. I can see why the game exploded, seeing people's reaction to being scared is a really easy way for a game to get popular especially at the game's release and a game that starts off normal then becomes scary is really perfect for that, it's just outside of it being that there really isn't much to get here.

when i was 13, i put an uncomfortable amount of effort into a gacha animation about this game to impress a (ultimately lesbian) girl who was with one of my best friends at the time, so that's something i suppose