Doki Doki Literature Club is Paradoxically Perfect

This Article Will Contain Minor Spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club

To say that visual novels and dating sims aren’t exactly my thing would be a bit of an understatement. The only VN I’ve ever found myself ‘playing’ was around five years ago; a relatively short experience called Juniper’s Knot which followed the brief tale of a young boy’s encounter with an entrapped demon. While it was enjoyable, it was something I did just as a time filler and since then I’ve never laid my hands on another one. Until now.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a game that I never would have even looked twice at. I’d heard the name crop up every now and then, but it was only when gathering information/images regarding the game for our review in the GameOn Magazine that I truly noticed it. The genre was down as ‘horror’ which I didn’t think anything of until I went to the Steam page to gather images and was greeted with four doey-eyed girls against a cutesy pastel background accompanied by the most typical dating sim music I’ve ever heard. Seeing that the game was free, I decided to download it and started playing for about 20 minutes but ultimately left off on the second day, still put off by the stereotypical aesthetic and upbeat direction of the game, even if the Steam page was littered with content warnings.

Not your typical aesthetic for a horror game

Flash-forward to almost precisely a year later, and I found myself thinking about the game again. Over the course of the year, I was slightly more aware of some of DDLC’s more intricate details, specifically the game's depictions of depression, existentialism, and an absurd amount of fourth-wall breaking. Having found a spare three hours, I decided to knuckle down and play through the game. While the game was slow to start, once shit hit the fan, as they say, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen until the game was over.

Well actually I did take my eyes off the screen, several times, but that’s just down to how effectively Team Salvato puts the player on edge (and is an entirely different topic I could write about). But what makes the game perfect is precisely what makes you unable to appropriately talk about the game to a friend.

The various routes you can take make multiple playthroughs worthwhile

I went in with moderate knowledge regarding the events of the game. I knew various mental health issues came up and I knew that one of the characters end up committing suicide (although I believed this was an avoidable outcome). While that still didn’t prepare me for some of the themes and subjects that turn up in the game, the effect would have been much greater if I’d gone in with zero clues, but if I’d had no idea about what was to come, I never would have even tried the game.

At its core, Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that puts a satirical twist on the dating sim concept in a manner that creates an incredible experience to those who are outsiders of the genre. It thrives off of misdirection, subversion of expectations and the emotional punches in the gut as you’re repeatedly reminded that this isn’t just a regular dating simulator. Yet, the mere knowledge of these traits pulls away from any magic the game holds. In terms of spoiler-sensitivity, the game rivals that of Undertale (and personally, surpasses it) when it comes to the best experience being had when you have zero knowledge of the game, but the diversion away from the core genre makes DDLC especially difficult to effectively praise. 

You find yourself saying this many times during the choices presented to you in the game

As I’ve found myself calling it, the game is ‘Paradoxically Perfect’; with no glaring flaws, but most of it’s best qualities being hidden behind this visual novel facade to such a degree that to even be told why the game is so good will immediately lessen the experience and impact of the game when you play it for yourself. Speaking of, if you haven’t played it and somehow got this far, go do that. Now.