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Doki Doki Literature Club!
The four main characters pose in front of a white background dotted with pink polka dots. The game's logo sits in the top left corner.
The cover art of Doki Doki Literature Club!, featuring the four main characters (from left to right) Sayori, Yuri, Monika and Natsuki.
Developer(s)Team Salvato
Publisher(s)Team Salvato
Designer(s)Dan Salvato
Programmer(s)Dan Salvato
Artist(s)Satchely (characters)[1][2]
VelinquenT (backgrounds)
Writer(s)Dan Salvato
Composer(s)Dan Salvato
EngineRen'Py
Platform(s)
Release
  • WW: September 22, 2017
Genre(s)Visual novel
Mode(s)Single-player

Doki Doki Literature Club! is a 2017 American freeware visual novel developed by Team Salvato for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. The game was initially distributed through itch.io, and later became available on Steam. The story is told from the perspective of a male high school student who joins the school's literature club in an attempt to woo one of its four female members. Doki Doki Literature Club! features a non-traditional plot structure with multiple endings and unlockable cutscenes with each of the main characters. Although this game initially appears to be a lighthearted dating simulator, it is in fact a metafictional psychological horror game that extensively breaks the fourth wall.

The game was developed in an estimated two-year period by a team led by Dan Salvato, known previously for his modding work for Super Smash Bros. Melee. According to Salvato, the inspiration for the game came from his mixed feelings toward anime and a fascination for surreal and unsettling experiences. Upon its release, Doki Doki Literature Club! received mainly positive critical attention for its successful use of horror elements and unconventional nature within the visual novel genre. The game also inspired internet memes and achieved a large following online.

Gameplay

The player is able to select a word from a selection, presented in a lined notebook. A counter in the upper right shows how many words are left to choose. Three of the main character, Sayori; Natsuki; and Yuri, are present in the bottom left in chibi form.
The poem writing minigame in Doki Doki Literature Club!

Doki Doki Literature Club! is a dating simulator. As such, its gameplay has a low level of interactivity and consists of scenes with static two-dimensional images of characters in a first-person perspective, accompanied by occasional choices the player is forced to make in order to advance the plot. The descriptions and dialogue are depicted in the form of accompanying text with no voice acting. The game's narration is provided by the game's protagonist (whom the player controls), a member of the titular literature club, to which he was invited by his childhood friend Sayori.[3][4][5] Any decisions the player is advocated to make over the course of the plot affect the development of the protagonist's relationships with the key female characters Sayori, Yuri, Natsuki, and Monika, but ultimately have little effect on the outcome of the game.[6] The characters' interactions with the protagonist are also influenced by a minigame in which the player is required to compose a poem from a set of randomly selected individual words. Each girl in the literature club has different word preferences, and will react positively when the player picks a word that they like.[3][4][5][6] The characters' reactions are stylized in the form of miniature chibi avatars of the characters which are displayed at the bottom of the screen during the minigame, and which will jump given the opportunity as a response to the player selecting one of their favorite words.[3] Depending on the results of these minigames, the player will experience additional cutscenes for whatever character liked that particular poem the most.[5][6] The narrative is divided into three acts and an epilogue, between which the game restarts.[7] At a certain point, the player must manipulate the game's files in order to advance the narrative.[8]

Plot

The protagonist is invited by his cheerful childhood friend Sayori, to join their high school's literature club as a remedy for his insular nature.[3][4][5] The lead character reluctantly agrees to her proposal and promptly encounters the other members of the club: the assertive Natsuki, the diffident Yuri, and the bubbly, popular club president Monika.[3][5][6][9] After each day passes in the literature club the protagonist is prompted to compose a poem which he will then be able to share with the rest of the club members the following day. As the club prepares for the school's upcoming cultural festival in which the characters are intended to share their poems with a wider audience, Sayori reveals to the protagonist that she suffers from depression and confesses her love to him.[10] The following day, Monika passively shows the protagonist an uncharacteristically morbid poem by Sayori that insistently orders an unnamed entity to "get out of her head." Realizing that something horrible has happened to her, the protagonist rushes to Sayori's home where he discovers that she has hanged herself before the game abruptly ends.[7][10]

The player is sent back to the main menu, with all previous save files deleted.[11] The narrative repeats upon the start of a new game, but Sayori is glaringly absent; her name and dialogue are rendered illegible, and the characters do not remember her existence. In addition, the character sprites appear corrupted from time to time and what appear to be computer glitches or bugs become commonplace.[10][12] Monika replaces Sayori by inviting the protagonist to join the club. Aside from the game's frequent distortions, it is revealed through dialogue and unlockable "secret poems" that Natsuki is malnourished and is being abused by her father, and it becomes apparent that the normally calm and shy Yuri is gradually becoming unstable, possessive and prone to self-harm.[7] Yuri's decline in sanity culminates in the act of giving the protagonist a "poem" that is indecipherable and covered in blood and other bodily fluids. While Monika callously dismisses this anomalous behavior, Natsuki is more concerned and secretly hands the protagonist a message under the guise of passing him a poem which begs him to seek help for Yuri. After showing the main character her message Natsuki's face goes blank as she is immediately manipulated by an unknown force into taking back her words and insisting that the player spend all of his time not with Natsuki or with Yuri but with Monika instead. After a heated quarrel over who the protagonist will help with the school festival, Yuri ejects Monika and Natsuki from the room and privately confesses her love for the protagonist. Whether or not the protagonist accepts Yuri's confession, she commits suicide by repeatedly stabbing herself, after which the protagonist is forced to stay with her and watch as her corpse slowly decomposes over the course of the entire weekend as a result of the broken game script.[10] Natsuki returns upon the weekend's conclusion, vomits at the sight of Yuri's body and flees the scene. Monika appears and apologizes to the protagonist for the "boring" weekend he had spent, and compensates by deleting Natsuki's character file from existence, causing the game to restart once again.[7]

For the third and final act the protagonist is placed in what remains of the literature club classroom with Monika seated across from him. Monika reveals that she is a self-aware video game character who has the ability to manipulate and delete other character files, which she used to alter the behavior of her club-mates in an unsuccessful bid to make them unlikable and prevent their confessions of love to the protagonist. She expresses her loneliness from being relegated to a fruitless supporting role within an empty world where her only company had been "autonomous personalities" designed only to fall in love with the protagonist, and she confesses her own love not to the protagonist character, but directly to the player.[7][10] Monika will sit and talk to the player indefinitely about various topics until the player manually enters the game's directory and deletes Monika's character file. Monika initially lashes out at the player, but ultimately forgives them and remorsefully repents by restoring the game and the characters excluding herself.

Endings

Depending on the course of action taken by the player, the game can come to three possible conclusions. The traditional ending sees Sayori introducing herself as the president of the literature club and expressing her gratitude to the player for dispelling Monika. However, as the new club president Sayori soon adopts Monika's possessive characteristics, after which Monika intervenes via text prompt and removes Sayori from the game in order to save the player. Upon realizing that her efforts to make amends have been fruitless, Monika deletes the game as the end credits roll and are concluded with a note from Monika herself, stating that she has disbanded the literature club because "no happiness can be found" in it.[7]

A more positive ending occurs if the player has viewed all of the optional cutscenes in a single playthrough, which requires saving and loading at several points before witnessing Sayori's initial suicide.[13] Sayori instead expresses her gratitude to the player for emotionally supporting all the club members, tearfully bids farewell and assures the player that all the club members love them before deleting the game herself. After the credits, the player is presented with a message from the game's developer, Dan Salvato, describing his intentions behind creating the game and his opinions on video games as a whole.[14]

If the player preemptively deletes Monika's file from the directory before starting the game, Sayori is made the default leader of the club. Upon realizing the true nature of the game and her role in it, Sayori panics and forcefully closes the game. Opening the game again will display an image of Sayori having hanged herself.[13]

Development and release

Doki Doki Literature Club! was developed by American programmer Dan Salvato over the course of approximately two years, and is his debut title in the video game industry.[15] Prior to its release, Salvato was known for creating the FrankerFaceZ extension for Twitch,[15] his modding work in the Super Smash Bros scene,[16] and for his custom Super Mario Maker levels.[17][18] Salvato was inspired to create a visual novel by his "love-hate relationship" with anime, and emphasized the abundant use of clichés in the genre and the frequent plots centering around "cute girls doing cute things", which he saw as both an asset and a detriment to the viewer's enjoyment. Salvato sought to create a title that would attract the player's attention regardless of how they personally view anime.[15]

Discussing the horror elements of the game, Salvato explained that he was inspired by "things that are scary because they make you uncomfortable, not because they shove scary-looking things in your face."[15] To achieve this, Salvato developed the façade of a cute setting, which would break down over time along with the behavior of the characters, and eventually the role of one evil character who had seized control of the game from the player would be revealed. In creating the game's horror elements, Salvato drew inspiration from Yume Nikki and Eversion, and emphasized to his team that he wanted the market for visual novels to become much more daring and less reliant on the same plot concepts.[19] The game's characters were based around standard anime archetypes and were given Japanese names to emphasize a pseudo-Japanese atmosphere characteristic of Western-produced visual novels. The sole exception to this format is Monika, who received an English name as a hint to her individual nature compared to the other characters.[20]

The four main characters in a prototype art style. The art is notably less refined, resembling older visual novels.
The prototypical versions of the cast of Doki Doki Literature Club! were created by Dan Salvato in a free online program for creating anime characters.

Because Salvato lacked artistic skill, he used a free online anime-creation program to create the initial character designs and applied these designs in test versions of the game.[21] Salvato recognized that a product of such quality would not satisfy potential players,[21] so he made a request to his friend, a translator for Sekai Project, for sketches of school uniforms and hairstyles for the characters.[22] Salvato then handed initial visual development over to Kagefumi, who left the project very early on. After Kagefumi's departure from the project, Salvato contacted the freelance artist Satchel, who created the final character sprites, over the course of a few months.[2] The sprites were created in several parts to give the poses more variety.[23] The background images were originally created as three-dimensional models, and then processed by the artist VelinquenT.[24]

Salvato also composed the game's score.[25] The introductory composition, "Doki Doki Literature Club!", is primarily performed by piano and flute with accompaniment by string instruments. The composition "Okay, Everyone!" has five different versions, four of which are performed by different musical instruments that represent each of the four female characters. Monika's version emphasizes the piano, Yuri's version uses pizzicato and harps, Natsuki's version is played by xylophone and recorder, and Sayori's is played by ukulele. The game's score is generally calm and serene with the exception of two tracks, "Sayo-nara" and "Just Monika", which are ominous in tone.[26] "Your Reality", a vocal song performed over the end credits, is sung by Jillian Ashcraft.[25]

Doki Doki Literature Club! was first released on September 22, 2017 on itch.io, and was later also released on Steam.[27] The game is available as freeware with an optional pay what you want model. Paying US$10 or more unlocks a bonus "Fan Pack" that includes desktop and mobile wallpapers, the game's official soundtrack, and a digital concept art booklet.[28] The game's soundtrack was released on two compact discs respectively consisting of 15 and 10 tracks. The first CD contains all the main compositions of the game, while the second consists of remixes and alternative arrangements.[26]

On 28 September 2017, Dan Salvato posted an additional Doki Doki Literature Club! music soundtrack piece called doki17.mp3 to the unofficial Doki Doki Literature Club! Discord server, referring to it as "an unfinished track that never made it into the game" which "[while] pretty far from finished [was] still somewhat pleasant".[29]

The soundtrack saw another release by iam8bit on "crimson smoke" vinyl in the first quarter of 2019.[30] On January 1, 2018, the main characters of Doki Doki Literature Club! were added to Yandere Simulator as character skins for the titular character, with Salvato's permission.[31][32] On January 2020, Salvato announced that new content would be added to DDLC, but clarified that he was not making a sequel to the game.[33]

Themes and analysis

Doki Doki Literature Club! has frequently been cited as a satire of the visual novel genre it depicts. Steven T. Wright for Rock Paper Shotgun noted that even as the pastel-tinged game universe splits apart at its very seams the game still "never turns its many knives on you, the player," instead choosing to self-destruct, "cracking open to reveal nothing but artifice."[34] The game has been viewed by many as a critique of dating simulators and of the people who play them, emphasized by a quote from the creator Dan Salvato, in which he mentions that he wanted to take a stab at the traditional visual novel stereotype of "cute girls doing cute things."[15] The game has also been viewed as a commentary on grief and mental illness, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers of untreated depression, and particularly about the consequences of suicide.[35]

Reception

The game was received positively by critics, and accumulated a score of 78/100 on Metacritic based on seven reviews.[36]

Steven T. Wright of PC Gamer described the game as "a post-modern love letter to the genre it represents", and compared its deconstructive quality to Undertale and Pony Island.[4] Robert Fenner of RPGFan noted that traditionally, major visual novel developers such as Key and 5pb. produced lengthy day-by-day narratives of a standard anime protagonist's relationships with their supporting cast. According to Fenner, previous attempts to revise the format, such as Hatoful Boyfriend and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, could not escape the conventions of their genre and fully reveal their dramatic potential. He then declared that Doki Doki Literature Club! had succeeded in this field by making unusual use of the Ren'Py engine and providing unexpected plot twists.[3]

Reviewers emphasized that the game achieves its surprising impact on the player due to its outward resemblance to typical eroge games: it has a pronounced anime style in its character design,[3][8] and the game's goal is to develop a relationship with one of the characters.[11][12] In addition, the characters consist of anime stereotypes whose behavior is sparsely displayed through their sprites,[5] and the game's musical accompaniment is light, bouncy, gentle and playful.[3][4] According to critics, these aspects combined to create the impression of a standard visual novel that would prompt the player to become attached to the characters.[4][5][8][12] VisualNovelist of Jeuxvideo.com positively compared the game's visual quality to Everlasting Summer, another independent visual novel with the appearance of a professional production.[37] Reviewers pointed out that the game's horror was built on the destruction of a sense of control over what happens in the game and the feeling of helplessness that stems from the distortions in the game's world.[8][11] Victoria Rose of Polygon stated that this approach was strikingly different from traditional horror games and films, where the viewer remains alienated from what is happening on the screen.[11] Amy Josuweit of Rock, Paper, Shotgun noted that while earlier visual novels have broken the fourth wall by crashing the client or adding extra files, Doki Doki Literature Club! changed the angle by deliberately destroying files rather than adding them.[8]

GQ's Tom Philip commented that at times the narrative felt like "a slog, clicking through endless amounts of inane, flirty conversation about poetry."[41] Fenner opined that the game did not pass the Bechdel test and positioned the protagonist as a seductive casanova. However, he emphasized that the plot is ultimately a "sharply aware polemic against harem anime/visual novels" in which "the lengths the ladies go to are not wholly because of the protagonist, but rather he can be read as a symptom—an easy outlet." Fenner also felt that the game, like Katawa Shoujo before it, "appears to veer dangerously close to fetishization of very real issues."[3] Nevertheless, reviewers recognized the game's plot focus as successful and relevant.[3][4][5] 8 Bit Rambles stated that Doki Doki Literature Club! "revolves around love in its most demented and deconstructive form," and characterized the game as an example of postmodern art.[42]

At IGN's Best of 2017 Awards, the game won the People's Choice Award each for "Best PC Game",[39] "Best Adventure Game" (for which it was also a runner-up),[43] "Best Story",[44] and "Most Innovative".[45] IGN also featured Doki Doki Literature Club! on their list of the "18 Best Horror Games of 2017" and subsequently as the 12th scariest game of this generation.[46][47] Nerd Much? included the game on their 2020 list of the "50 Scariest Horror Games of All Time."[48] The game won the "Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award" and was nominated for "Trending Game of the Year" at the 2018 SXSW Gaming Awards.[40][49] EGMNow ranked the game 16th in their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017.[50]

Cultural impact

In its first three months of release, Doki Doki Literature Club! was downloaded over one million times,[51] and exceeded two million downloads about a month later.[52] Popular video streamers, such as PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, Markiplier, and Etika, helped the game receive additional attention with their Let's Play playthroughs. The game inspired internet memes (e.g. "Just Monika" and "I Gently Open The Door") and achieved a large following online. Salvato criticized the "Trapsuki" meme, a theory that Natsuki actually a “trap” due to her broad shoulders and small chest, calling the meme "really disrespectful" and stating he "doesn't like to joke about people's sex/gender, much less try to convince others that it's not what they think."[53]

Monika, the main antagonist of the game, was well-received by fans of the game, and became the subject of many fan works, such as the mod Monika's After Story.[54] She also become one of the game's most popular characters, with several memes (such as "Just Monika") being made about her.[55] Salvato was surprised by Monika's positive reception and massive popularity, stating that he did not expect her to get so popular.[56]

References

  1. ^ Satchely [@_Satchely] (June 1, 2019). "Is anyone able to edit the DDLC Wikipedia article? I got notified that for some reason I'm not credited as the artist anymore" (Tweet) – via Twitter.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ a b Satchely [@_Satchely] (June 2, 2019). "Suddenly the artist credit is being switched around in the article, I don't think it was like that yesterday. Kagefumi didn't draw the final sprites and backgrounds. Her art isn't in the game because she left the project very early on" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Fenner, Robert (December 24, 2017). "RPGFan Review—Doki Doki Literature Club". RPGFan. Archived from the original on October 6, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
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  7. ^ a b c d e f Fujita, Shōhei (March 4, 2018). "【完全ネタバレコラム】世界を大いに盛り上げる「Doki Doki Literature Club」の真の目的と少女たちからの救難信号". IGN Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved March 30, 2019.
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  23. ^ Salvato, Dan (2017) Doki Doki Literature Club! Concept Art Booklet, p. 18
  24. ^ Salvato, Dan (2017) Doki Doki Literature Club! Concept Art Booklet, p. 20
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  31. ^ "Happy New Year!". Yandere Simulator Development Blog. January 1, 2018.
  32. ^ @dansalvato (January 2, 2018). "It's cool, I gave him permission under the condition that their likeness isn't exploited or used for profit in any way" (Tweet) – via Twitter.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  33. ^ Miller, Chris (January 6, 2020). "Doki Doki Literature Club Looks Like It Will Be Receiving Some Content This Year | Happy Gamer". HappyGamer. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
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  43. ^ "Best of 2017 Awards: Best Adventure Game". IGN. December 20, 2017. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
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  46. ^ 18 Best Horror Games of 2017 - IGN, retrieved December 28, 2020
  47. ^ The 25 Scariest Games of This Generation - IGN, October 30, 2019, retrieved December 28, 2020
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  53. ^ "Doki Doki Literature Club creator shuts down transphobic 'Natsuki is a trap' meme". The Daily Dot. January 17, 2018. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  54. ^ "15 Doki Doki Literature Club Mods That Totally Change The Game". TheGamer. September 12, 2019. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  55. ^ Valens, Ana (February 20, 2018). "Here's the Best 'Just Monika' Memes Taking Over the Internet". Gamepur. Archived from the original on April 12, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  56. ^ Lee, Otter (January 3, 2018). "We Interview Doki Doki Literature Club's Twisted Creator Dan Salvato". AsianCrush. Archived from the original on February 22, 2019.
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