Doki Doki Literature Club Review
Played on PC
Developed by Team Salvato
Released 22nd September 2017
As his debut title in the video game industry, Dan Salvato developed this experience with a helping hand in many of the departments within the game: art, music, etc. After establishing his "love-hate relationship" with anime, Salvato pursued the niche genre of visual novels, emphasising the archetypal "cutesy" -ness that anime and this project exude. 4 stereotypical anime-like love interests later, Salvato has now constructed one of the more clever gaming facades and used the typical pseudo-Japanese atmosphere characteristic of Western-produced visual novels as a framework for a truly excellent 180 experience.
Story
The story is quite incredible. From the beginning, the game lulls the player into this sense of false security with its light-hearted visual novel veil. The initial premise is that our protagonist finds himself joining the poetry club at the behest of his childhood friend, Sayori. But as the narrative progresses, there is a polarising shift in genre, tone and mood and it's amazing how the welcoming disguise of the game gets dropped and reveals its unsettling and disturbing nature. Doki Doki feels like a masterclass in its 4th wall breaks with how well it treads the line between being self-aware and interacting with the real world. The pacing is also well done as the rate of events gets exponentially more rapid, acting as a signal to how the game spirals out of the player's control, going hand-in-hand with both the horror and the 4th wall breaking.
Whether it's the underlying hints in the first act of the game that rouse enough suspicion to keep you engaged but don't uncover too much, to the sickening discomfort certain scenes present, the game is excellent at making a form of horror that feels unnatural and unique. Horror typically encompasses this scale of fear that interacts with the player - either it's jumpscare heavy and relies on short bursts of a shock to engage the player, or it plays the long game and builds up the paranoia. Every horror game utilises both, yet this game decides to not use either. Instead, it's with horrific imagery that neither scares you nor makes you paranoid, but instead, unsettles you instantly and it retains that feeling throughout, even when there aren't any moments of terror present.
Gameplay
Since the game is a visual novel, the gameplay is heavily limited to clicking the screen for the next line of dialogue and the occasional story choice. Because of this, there isn't much for me to talk about or critique so I won't be including a Gameplay score into the final verdict.
Characters
The characters are relatively one-dimensional in their portrayals, however, as the story progressively becomes uncontained, these personas get flipped into another state of one-dimensionality, but this acts as the oddly perfect sweet spot of intriguing characteristics. At first, they are all equipped with this basic, "waifu" energy that is often found in these "cutesy" anime. Yet, that quickly gets reversed with these disturbing and traumatising undertones these characters have, from one being so obsessive that they practise self-harm for pleasure, while another is emotionally suppressed and manipulative to reach her goals. Like the story, these 180 turns are more effective than jarring and work extremely well in that context.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is decent, with an audible and visual experience that feels more lopsided than complimentary. The art style is of very high quality with these clean designs that clearly present the demanding talent and attention to detail that was needed to achieve them. The horror elements that find themselves peeking through are also designed expertly, reaching this Ying and Yang of feeling natural in the world, but unnatural in the game.
As for the soundtrack, it's not the greatest. It has the cliche, chill and mellow vibe of any other visual novel, but its lack of terror-focused tracks feels slightly disappointing with how great its presence is felt via the narrative and visuals. This ends up creating this disproportionate balance between the visuals and soundtrack, with what feels like a reduced need for the audio - something that should not be the case, regardless of genre.
Story - 8.5/10
Characters - 7.5/10
Atmosphere - 6/10