Doki Doki Literature Club is a free visual novel that presents itself as a totally normal game, where you’ll meet some cute girls at an after school club. There’s more than meets the eye to this one, though.
When I saw a few weeks ago that Doki Doki Literature Club was one of the most popular visual novels on itch.io, I was surprised. While it didn’t look bad it just seemed so… generic. Cute moe girls! After school clubs! These were the kinds of visual novels that I stray away from. Last night, as I played Doki Doki Literature Club, I found myself not just utterly baffled but at times truly distressed. This game plays on your expectations of a cute anime girl visual novel, with its cutesy girls next door, and finds ways to twist them that hurt. It’s impossible for me to try to just tell you not to get invested in any of the characters because they are insidiously charming… until they aren’t.
This game is probably best experienced if you go in blind, but if you aren’t sold yet, here’s a taste of what to expect. There are small hints of the game’s disturbing nature early on. The characters’ poetry that you read deals with more serious ideas and feelings. The plucky girl next door writes about putting her happy feelings in a jar and then smashing them, the shy girl about obsession and death, and the cute but mean one writes about the futility of choice. The dialogue for these characters was also a little ironic, and at times, just plain sad.
After a while, Doki Doki Literature Club started getting hostile towards me, the player. Not the player character, but me, the person making choices. It took control of my mouse, obscured parts of the screen to keep me from choosing certain options, and characters would speak to me in ways that indicated they knew they were in a game. It also started looking like this:
This is a truly special game. Any small complaints I may have (it is sometimes gratuitously violent) are overshadowed by the ways it is successfully messed with my head. If you like horror games, especially ones that really get under your skin, please check out Doki Doki Literature Club.
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5 responses to “Doki Doki Literature Club Scared The Crap Out Of Me”
Sorry, but after 100%ing Hatoful Boyfriend, I pretty much exclusively only play Japanese VNs that are inspired by a schoolgirl wanting to bang a pigeon.
I think this article needs a bigger spoiler warning (and ideally removal of the spoilerific screenshots). I went into this blind off some vague but extremely positive Steam reviews and was mindblown. I don’t even like the VN format and this game had me actually laughing at how far off the deep end things went. The one thing I’ll say is that it’s very inconsistent with how it deals with some of it’s core themes – sometimes it can be quite insightful but for the majority its pretty tactless and gratuitous. It didn’t diminish my enjoyment but it may affect other people’s experience.
The hell that is crazy
Started reading/playing this last night. Got to the first major twist. Man, this thing stays nice and fluffy for ages then gets really dark, really quickly!
Wow, just played this.
Brilliant.