Doki Doki Literature Club (2017)

Created by Dan Salvato.

Game development was not exactly the first career choice that came to my mind. Ever since middle school, I was pretty set on wanting to become a Mechanical Engineer. Books and movies were my past time hobby. I enjoyed them because I found some of them really inspiring. I fell in love with the worlds the many creators had built. And through that world I fell in love with good stories that were told. Books and films were also the few medium I can use to express my desire to write stories and to create worlds. Occasionally, I would spend time writing fan fictions and making video montages of different games. I really enjoy the time I spent away from the world we live in. And just wonder across the different reality of existence, often wondering if I would ever get the chance to share them with more people other than myself.

When it comes to games, however, I spend most of my time in games that I can share with my friends. I would spend hours on multiplayer online games like DOTA or Overwatch. Most of the time, games for me felt like a different channel to express my competitive spirit and a medium for me to socialize with my friends. What I did not know was the hidden gem of a genre known as Indie Games. There is a sub-genre that is very popular within the Indie Games circle—Narrative Driven Games.

Don’t get me wrong, I know what Visual Novel are. It was pretty popular among my group of friends. But I was quite stubborn when it comes to them. I would see them more like a dating simulation and often I would associate these games to pornography. Well I mean, they are… dating sims. So I never really get to try any of them, despite being very popular among my circle of friends.

When Doki Doki Literature Club (I shall call it DDLC from hereon out), it took the internet by storm. I was hearing that so many streamers out there had been playing DDLC. Some of them even called it a work of a genius. That got me very curious. In my eyes back then, DDLC was a dating simulation that for some reason got very famous. Like incredibly famous. It came to a point where even my sister talked about it. And soon my entire circle of friends were talking about it. I still had no idea what DDLC was all about, and I was still very reluctant to try it.

But my curiosity got the better of me. I was too intrigued to finding out how exactly did a dating simulation garner so much traction from the mass audience. I never look back since, nor do I ever regret trying out such a masterpiece.

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Before you continue, the following contains spoilers to the game. But this journal is for me to explain why DDLC had inspired me and I have to tell the nitty-gritty of it. So proceed at your own risk, although I am wondering why have you not played such a wonderful game. If you would want to skip the spoiler, you can continue from the next separator.

I played DDLC expecting it to be a dating simulation. And the way Dan Salvato had structured the game was still mind-blowing until this day. I believe that Dan had an extensive share of understanding when it comes to Storytelling and also generally a law of attraction that governed most people.

When you first started DDLC, the first character you would encounter is Sayori. She was portrayed as the “main” female protagonist in the game, even having a well-established connection with the protagonist being his childhood friend. Psychologically, I feel that it directed the attention of the players to Sayori. I, personally felt more attraction towards Sayori compared to the other characters introduced in the game—Yuri, Monika and Natsuki.

The game began just like any other visual novels you would expect. And for every option I was given, I would choose one that would lead me to have a better and closer bond with Sayori. Well… after all… at that point I have chosen which “route” I wanted to go with. So for every poem formation and every choices, all my attention goes to Sayori. When everything feels like it’s going well—albeit the rather disturbing ending of the first day—Dan Salvato flipped the game around.

As I said before, I personally feel that Dan had structured the game such that the player would feel the most attraction towards Sayori. Or even if otherwise, the player would deem her one of the better options among the other characters. So when that infamous scene happened, I was horrified and became psychologically wounded. Right there and then I knew why exactly the game had garnered so much traction in the internet. Right there and then, I wanted to see how the game would end.

As the game progressed, it became more and more uncanny. And I just could not stop playing. I was forced to stop when I became stuck with Monika. You need to understand that back then, I really did not know the potential a game has in presenting its stories. When Monika—a literal character in the game—started to call me by my ACTUAL name, I was completely dumbfounded (I am working as a game programmer now and looking back I felt how dumb I look when it happened). The game would hint to delete Monika, but I have no idea what that mean. I thought that was the ending of the game, for me to be stuck with Monika forever. It took me a while until I realised that there is a file called monika and I have to delete it. When it happened, I felt that the way I have been looking at games had been wrong. I did not expect the amount of interaction and immersion that a game could give when it comes to story telling.

Soon afterwards, I did finish the game. And not long after I found out that there was a better ending to the game. I proceeded on to complete the entire content the game could offer. And through those, I connected with every single character that Dan had written. All 4 characters, I felt that each of them had given me a different experience in my life.

The final “true” ending of the game was quite heartwarming too. It came with a scene containing a letter from Dan Salvato himself. He thanked the players that stuck through until the very end and have spent the time with the characters he had created. And most important of all, everything he said about storytelling in games are very true.

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DDLC opened my eyes to the endless possibility of story telling in game. And for once in my life, after playing a game, I actually wanted to become a Game Developer. The amount of immersion brought all players to actually become part of the world and part of the story. Among the many medium out there, never have I felt closer to the main protagonist. I dare say, it felt that I am the protagonist. DDLC convinced me to look into Game Development as a method for me to express my stories and to share my world. There is a lot of magic being put in a game.

But among the many things that DDLC had brought me. What I am truly grateful of is how it changed my perspective about games. I looked into more of these narrative-driven Indie Games, hoping to find another diamond in the rough. And from then on, I have played a lot of games that further helped me to make the decision that I want to pursue a career in Game Development. Without DDLC, I would not have played amazing games like To The Moon, What Remains of Edith Finch, Oxenfree, and my favorite game of all time: Undertale (this deserves its own post one day). And I could not be more grateful to Dan Salvato for bringing us such a masterpiece.

“I like happy the most,
but sometimes when you have a little raincloud in your head…
a sad poem can help give the raincloud a little hug…
And make a nice happy rainbow!” 

Sayori