If you haven’t played this game yet, please stop reading and go play it. It’s on Steam, it will only take you a few hours, and it’s free. I’m going to be talking openly about everything this game does and why it’s an amazing, realized experience, so spoilers all over the place here. Trust me. Go in blind.
Doki Doki Literature Club is what you make of it. I went into this game expecting some shock value horror (off of the warning at the start), a small little project in a developer’s spare time that they gave to the world for fun. What I got was a smart, thoughtful horror game that truly taps into “horror” beyond scary monsters and spooky environments. This game gets horror, this game gets metafiction, this game just knows how to do what it sets out to do.
On the most basic level, the horror, or rather the progression of such, is smooth and really well executed. From the simple, cutesy opening, you then get some poems that are maybe a bit at odds with it. Easy enough to shrug off as artsy. Then as you go on, you’ll start getting hints and nudges that there’s some pretty ugly things going on under the surface. Natsuki may be the victim of child abuse, Yuri harms herself, and Sayori, well, Sayori is the focal point of the transition from act 1 to 2.
The transition to a seemingly more serious tone and subject matter, feels like a light shift, which is the important part here. Everything still feels in control, like things are still going ok. You even get a choice, giving the feeling and illusion of a dating simulator even still. You’re still doing ok. This is just character depth. Things will be alright.
Then everything goes to shit.
Sayori’s suicide is effective for two reasons: the illusion of an “end”, and the shock. You, minutes earlier, were given a choice as to how to respond to her. Of course, it didn’t matter, and she will go through with it no matter which one you choose, but the game tells you “the end, that’s it, no do overs, she’s dead.” You think you messed up, but you never had a single choice in the matter.
The other reason is, well, the sheer shock. I’m not usually a fan of shock value. It’s cheap and easy, with no lasting value.This, however, is good shock. It serves as a transition into act 2 in tone, and most importantly, it doesn’t shy away, showing every little detail of her lifeless body. It’s shock that leaves an impact, because minutes earlier, everything told you that you were still in control. And then BAM. All a lie, and you have to see every little bit of what has happened. Your entire perception of the game is shattered in this one moment. It’s shock to do something, not just shock to shock.
I’ll stop there, because we’d be here for hours if I just broke down the actual story at play. Suffice to say, the rest of the game totally upholds the quality in this first act throughout, and is great at keeping things smart, shocking, and horrifying.
However, that’s just one half of the game’s story. The other half gets into this metafictional edge, with Monika’s full awareness that she is in a fictional game, and trying to get with *the player* specifically, as in you, the one playing the game.
The game does metafiction well, too. It’s not content to simply say “oooooooo we broke the 4th wall” and move on, no, it goes all in. Menus are bent to Monika’s will. The game will pull from your windows username to try to namedrop you and freak you out. You have to delve into the game’s files themselves in order to fix what’s wrong. It makes you intensely aware of the artificiality of it all, and it knows and understands how to craft a “game” world.
And finally, the metafiction plays into the horror. Everything in DDLC is super tightly woven and interesting, and more than anything, the game knows and understands how to keep it consistent. The metafiction and horror don’t coexist side by side, they feed into each other.
I’ve already gone on for far too long, but as a quick example of what I mean: just look at Monika’s position. She’s aware that she’s in a game, and she also really wants to love the player. BUT, the game also draws attention to how horrifying this is, how aware she is of the fakeness of her world. She has no control, no agency, and her attempts to gain such destroy everything. It’s the horror of a fake reality that is the metafiction.
That is to say, DDLC isn’t some groundbreaking plot that changed my view on the world or anything. At the end of the day, it just is what it is and doesn’t try to do more. But it is a brilliantly, expertly done story that doesn’t ever slack or leave anything hanging. It sets out what it wants to do, answers everything it needs for a satisfying story, and then lets the ideas it sets out hang for you to muse on. That is how you write a story, and DDLC is a shining example of it.
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