Doki Doki Literature Club thoughts

So overall Doki Doki Literature Club was a pretty fun experience. It felt less like a novel game, in the traditional sense, and more of a piece of exploratory media. It makes use of the game's various aspects: music, text, graphics, and the medium itself to full effect. Definitely an experience that couldn't have been replicated any other way.

Act 1 starts off very innocuously with the trappings of a typical OELVN-type dating sim, but there is heavy foreshadowing in the dialogues as well as the poems. After the suicide and into Act 2, immediately, your mind starts sounding alarm bells because  after having established apriori knowledge of what should be happening (from playing Act 1), you know something's going wrong. And it progressively gets worse and worse. The deterioration of the characters, personality-wise, as well as the game itself increasingly getting glitched builds tension, culminating in Yuri's suicide. Act 3 essentially reveals the truth behind the game, if it wasn't already obvious enough, and Act 4 is just a short epilogue, with no real 100% happy ending.

First of all, the juxtaposition of the very cute/moe atmosphere + really creepy "glitching" and just overall WTF-ness that happens (Yuriiiiiiiiiii) worked really well. Really bumps up the psychological horror factor. A lot of people talk about "jumpscares", but for me it's not really about that (mostly), but it takes advantage of the player's own awareness of the medium to create a psychologically tense and intimidating atmosphere.

The game's overall descent into madness is the kind of trainwreck where you just enjoy the ride, especially in the first play where you literally have no idea what crazy thing happens next. With maybe half or so of the "glitching" being randomized, there's usually some kind of small (or not-so-small) detail that you end up noticing in subsequent playthroughs.

It's an interesting work because for one, it gets suuuuuper meta about it being a game. The game knows it's a game, and so the creators take advantage of all the aspects to simultaneously create a deeper level of immersion, but then yank you right back out to remind you: this is a game. Monika manipulates the UI. Character files actively disappear and reappear. Messages from them pop up as files in the game folder as the game goes on... The game itself supposedly experiencing errors, crashing as the game's universe begins to contradict itself from Monika's mangling of code. You can clearly tell it takes advantage of the gimmicks when you step back and think about it, but the setup of the atmosphere is pretty good that you can maintain the suspension of disbelief and just enjoy the creepy bits. Of which there are so many, and already well-documented.

Admittedly this doesn't hold back on the language, the violence, or the themes explored. It doesn't get particularly preachy, while at the same time taking care to tread lightly, especially on the subject of depression. But had it pulled its punches, I think it would not nearly have been so effective. Again, the dissonance between presentation and actual content is what magnifies the actual impact of the game.

Personally, characters' backstories could have been explored more, there was definitely a lot of room for even more messed-up-ness there. The game itself is incredibly short, taking about 2-3 hours for the first playthrough, and another hour or so to get the "true" ending. Natsuki's backstory, especially, felt rather underdeveloped, as you only get hints of it in Act 2, if you get onto her route instead.

Overall, the game felt more like a proof of concept, or just the creator toying around with the idea of videogames as a meta-storytelling medium. And I think he succeeded in creating a short but effective and memorable experience.

PS: Yuri > Monika > Sayori > Natsuki.