Doki Doki Literature Club
“This game is not suitable for children or for those who are easily disturbed. This game may not be a safe experience for those suffering from anxiety or depression. By playing Doki Doki Literature Club, you agree that you have consulted the game’s age rating in your region and consent to viewing disturbing content.”
CONFIRM.
General Game Features
Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC!) is a visual novel, developed and published by Team Salvato for Microsoft Windows and macOS. The game is free and available on Steam or the official Team Salvato website, first released on September 22, 2017.
On June 11, 2021, Dan Salvato announced the release of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!: a paid version of the base game with extra content and high-definition graphics. This version was released on June 30, 2021, on Steam, and in July for Epic Games, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One.
Plot
The player is the protagonist of the game, a Japanese high school sophomore who meets Sayori, the “annoying” next-door neighbor and childhood friend, who pushes him to join her Literature Club, where she serves as the vice president.
The club consists of four girls:
Sayori, a cheerful girl for whom happiness is the most important thing.
Natsuki, the cupcake queen with an annoyed look, whose cute appearance hides much more beneath the surface.
Yuri, the intellectual, shy, reserved, and voluptuous girl, who finds comfort in horror stories, as well as intricate fantasy novels filled with details and stories with deep psychological elements.
Last but not least, Monika, the club president, the protagonist’s former classmate, intelligent, pianist, beautiful, and athletic, who immediately shows her leadership nature.
“Surreal horror often has the power to change how we see the world, even if only for a brief time.”
The protagonist is convinced by the girls to join the club. The main task is to write poems by selecting words from a predefined list. Each word is somehow linked to one of the club’s girls.
The first hours of the game move very slowly, perhaps too slowly, and you might feel a strong temptation to uninstall the game.
TIP: PUSH THROUGH.
Reach the day of the Club Festival. This is where the real turning point in the game occurs. Everything will change, and you will change as well. The events become very unsettling, “damaged” with glitches, bugs, and missing parts, with strange angles, increasingly sharp and dissonant music… Your choices will be more and more manipulated towards a specific character.
At this point, the player can unlock special poems, which will lead things to deteriorate into darkness.
Violence, knives, macabre imagery, self-harm, severe depression, family abuse, mood swings, generalized anxiety—all of this emerges during meetings at the Literature Club!
But there’s more. Much more.
You will reach a point where nothing makes sense anymore, and you will find yourself trapped in a floating school classroom… in the universe…
Portrait of Markov
A notable element is the book that Yuri offers to the protagonist: Portrait of Markov, with a menacing eye on its cover…
The book describes a religious ritual practiced in a prison: the prisoners were used as human guinea pigs for highly invasive experiments. Often the test subjects were mutilated and starved until they became killing machines, thirsty for blood.
What do you think?
Have you ever played it?
What feelings did it leave you with?
Let us know!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel!
