Video games are constantly trying different ways to make you feel like the game you’re playing has exciting, tangible stakes. Some are more creative about it than others.

Upsetting visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club has a lively modding scene. Fans have started making sequels, alternate routes and happier rewrites for the game and its characters.

Doki Doki Literature Club is the kind of game where the moment it ended, I wanted to spend more time with its characters. Although I'll never be able to play it for the first time again, here are a few games you can check out if you're also yearning for a similar experience.

Doki Doki Literature Club was a surprise hit last year. According to Steam reviews, you should play it if you like, uh, anime and giving yourself emotional pain.

Every game on this list served as a balm for the depression cave that I lived inside throughout 2017. I'm pretty sure these games happen to be good even if you're not depressed, since most of them popped up on my coworkers' own best-of lists, but I had such a dire need for escapism this year that I found myself evaluating every experience through that grim lens.

In 2017, I played a lot of games, but only 10 could make the cut for this blog. Culling the heard to just 10 was heartbreaking and required intense soul-searching. In no particular order, the best games I played in 2017.

2017 has been an absolute insane year for incredible game releases. So many that I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to my personal shame-pile. But while I may not have gotten all the AAA action I wanted, I still managed to fall in love with plenty of titles.

Here are my favourites.

Playing Doki Doki Literature Club is like realising you have a fever: For a while you deny the creeping feeling that something isn't quite right until it's too late to do anything about it. In the beginning of the game you think it's a cute dating sim, but before too long, you can no longer deny that you're playing a horror game.

While the latter half of the game is scary as hell, one of Doki Doki Literature Club's most impactful moments happens before its turn to horror.

Doki Doki Literature Club snuck up on everyone and became a cult hit. Dan Salvato, its writer and lead developer, played on the anime tropes present in its pink and cheery exterior to trick players into experiencing an unsettling story. "People might go into Doki Doki Literature Club making fun of it as a tropey anime game," he said, "only to find themselves caring about the characters (and possibly very scared of them)."