Doki Doki Literature Club is a free to play visual novel in which you join a literature club only to soon discover that not everything is as it seems.
Released last year for free on Steam this visual novel has since gone on to gain a strong cult following, no doubt in part to its slow evolution from a light-hearted dating simulator into something much darker. As such it’s no doubt best stated that potential spoilers lie ahead and considering how this is the sort of game which works best played blind please consider yourself warned.
Doki Doki Literature Club sees you playing what is assumed to be yourself as your childhood friend Sayori asks you to join the school literature club which is really the start of your problems as you soon find yourself trying to win the affections of the club members as you are given the chance to win the affections of Sayori as well as fellow club members Natsuki and Yuri.
How you ask? Well by having you compile poems by picking words from a list which depending on the word will resonate with different members of the trio as symbolised by their little avatar jumping up and down when you pick a word they like. Inturn this becomes a poem which hopfully the girl your trying to pick up will like as they feed back their thoughts to you and inturn subject you to their own attempts at poetry.
As the game progresses the mood gets increasingly darker as it builds to its shocking finale, but not of course before it has teased out a number of risqué encounters between yourself and members of the group, which due to the Manga style graphics can perhaps too easily be dismissed as being a by-product of the art style. This however is really not the case for while the game uses a Manga art style, its more in the writing that the raunchy moments are found than anything you see in the game.
The visual novel is a diversive style of gaming, especially when it leaves you like the name suggests reading a game than actually playing it which can leave you feeling more than a little detached from the experience especially when the plot is not compelling or worse still as in the case of this game when your being subjected to several rounds of questionable poetry from the group. It should be noted though that its through these poetry readings that the darkness can be found slowly creeping into the game, so while you might feel compelled to skim over the poetry it does actually serve a purpose here. Certainly this game won’t do anything to change your opinion of visual novels, especially when in terms of game play its nothing different from what we have seen from this genre before.
Where this game does attempt to stand out is during its final quarter, which felt more like it was attempting to create its own form of Creepy Pasta not only in terms of the plotting whose tone suddenly takes a sudden shift, but also from the fourth wall breaking elements it attempts to incorporate. This would not however be such an issue if the game didn’t require you to essentially play through the game again only this time with a couple of tweaks to game play in order for you to get the full experience, something I fear will be lost on the players not wanting to work their way through another 5 rounds of poetry especially when most of the creepy tactics being used are hit and miss to begin with.
An initially engaging experience that runs too long before deciding to play its final hand, as a free game it’s worth giving a look to see what the fuss is about but it’s highly unlikely that you will return to it once it’s over.