Okay I’m back. Been a long while but I finally have another game to talk about. If I am being honest I’m not sure I even remember how to write one of these at this point… Well only one way to find out!
Okay “Doki Doki Literature Club,” where to begin with this one? Well I guess I will begin by saying this will not be 100% spoiler free. I will do my best to keep spoilers somewhat minimized but a lot of what makes the game special is how it plays with the players emotions through story twists. Thus we must touch on some spoiler territory.
So let’s start out by talking about how the game “dresses itself” on the surface. The game initially portrays itself as a cheesy high school dating simulator. In fact it dresses it up so much so that if you played it around the time it was released you may have initially thought that it was going to be a dating sim. The M rating was obviously a warning sign. But you likely could be deceived otherwise. That being said, word quickly got out after release that, at its core, “Doki Doki Literature Club” is a psychological horror game. If you play through the game nowadays, especially on a console version like myself, you will likely know that the game falls firmly into the horror genre. Particularly because the case clearly says “#1 psychological horror game” and you are bombarded with what feels like a million warnings at game launch saying it isn’t for anxious, depressed, or easily disturbed audiences… Granted as someone who previously dealt with Anxiety problems but, found a weird sense in solace in the horror genre while at my lowest, I don’t fully agree with that sentiment.
So what is the gameplay like? The game essentially plays like a choose your own adventure. You will spend your days at a high school literature club talking to the various club members. During your conversations you will have to make choices that will alter how the story unfolds. At the end of each day you go home and “write a poem”. In order to write your poem you simply choose 20 words that you think would sound good in a poem. You don’t actually get to see the resulting poem as the player but the words you choose will alter how club members react after reading your poem. The game encourages you to choose words for your poem that you think your favorite club member will like. This is a “dating sim” after all. So the game wants to get you into the mind set of trying to get one of your classmates to like you romantically. Each day you share your poem with your fellow club members and they will share theirs with you.
As the days pass in the game it will quickly become apparent, through their poetry and behaviors, that your fellow club members are struggling severely with various mental disorders. Furthermore, every choice you make influences the club members mental state, and can potentially be harmful. Which brings me to what makes this game great. The game is full of “horror” and makes the player incredibly uneasy but not in a traditional sense. Your fellow club members aren’t monsters. Your life is never endangered. However, everyone else’s lives are endangered. Every action you take could drive your classmates over the edge. The game frequently will place you in situations where you have to choose between, chasing your own happiness and romantic pursuits, or “saving” your classmates from themselves. While, I only completed a single playthrough of the game and have not seen every possible branching path, I distinctly get the feeling there is no winning. No matter what you choose, somebody is going to spiral, and your choices will have led them there. Maybe it is because I personally have struggled with anxiety, and to a lesser extent depression, but in my opinion nothing is as unsettling as knowing your actions have led to someone else’s self harm.
If it isn’t clear already, I loved this game. Not because it has exciting gameplay or beautiful graphics but because it made me think, a lot… More so it made me introspective. In fact it is a rare game that made it so I couldn’t stop thinking about it even after completing the game. So much so in fact that weeks after completing the game I moved it further up my horror rankings then I initially placed because I simply couldn’t get it out of my head. So without further ado…
The Ranking
So after much thinking and reevaluating I think I finally found the appropriate place for “Doki Doki Literature Club” on my horror list. That placement is at a very impressive 3rd place. That puts “Doki Doki Literature Club” just behind “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” and in front of “Mortal Kombat X.”
Platform: Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Series X, and PC
Time to Beat: 4 hours 44 minutes 48 seconds.
Gaming Conquest 