Doki Doki Literature Club, a pleasant game about adorable anime teens learning about life and love, has many issues. Serious issues that you might want to be warned about as you play through the otherwise bright and cheery visual novel. For the release of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus on PC and consoles, developer Team Salvato came up with new ways to make sure players are forewarned before stumbling into disturbing content.
Released on PC in 2017, Doki Doki Literature Club quickly became a hit due to its deceptive nature. The game starts off like any other visual novel/dating simulator. Your character, the protagonist, is invited to join an after school club by a childhood friend, hoping to help them break free of their insular nature. A cast of colourful anime teens take great interest in your character, flirting, and joking around, as teens do.
I’d tiptoe around what happens next, but the trailers for the new version of the game lay it out plainly. This is a psychological horror game. Bad shit happens. Disturbingly bad. According to the trailer, IGN was unnerved and Polygon was uncontrollably horrified. The first time I played, I was shaken to the core.
So yeah, content warnings are definitely in order. In a blog post on the Team Salvato webpage, community manager and developer Joseph “Mithost” Boyd discussed a feature newly-added to the updated version of the game, optional in-game content warnings. Doki Doki Literature Club Plus opens with the same content warning as the original PC release, complete with a detailed list of specific issues that might disturb you as a player. It also warns you that viewing the detailed content warning will spoil the game, making it a somewhat tricky choice.
![Part of me wants to not recommend reading the content warning. The other parts are hiding. (Screenshot: Team Salvato)](https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/25/56f30196af2afb0eed85b47bd44d9507.png?quality=75?quality=75)
But now, the Plus version adds the ability to enable in-game warnings, which, rather than spoiling the experience with the detailed content warning at the start,allows you to opt for notifications that come up during gameplay prior to entering a disturbing scene. Before something bad happens, a message will pop-up letting you know. Without getting into specifics, I can say that many players will encounter what could be incredibly disconcerting content. If you’ve not played the original game, I highly recommend turning the in-game warnings on.
Read More: Doki Doki Literature Club Scared Me Shitless
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, comes to PlayStation 4 and 5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC on June 30 enhanced with new HD visuals, extra music, an image gallery, and brand-new side stories. I am terrified just thinking about it.
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