Game EXP: Doki Doki Literature Club! [Part 2] (PC)

 

Doki Doki Literature Club!

Platforms: Linux, macOS, PC

Release Date: September 22, 2017

Publisher: Team Salvato

Developer: Team Salvato 

First off, and a little bit of a potential spoiler, this article contains topics and discussions involving mental health, self-harm, and suicide, so I just want to put that out there before we go any further.

Before reading up on today's article, I would recommend you read Part 1 of my Game EXP article for Doki Doki Literature Club! posted this last Monday.  That article covers my first playthrough of the game and the first few moments of my second playthrough, which brings us up to where we will begin today, with only just a smattering of crossover.  

The first playthrough of the Doki Doki Literature Club! played nearly identical to a lot of visual novels, pressing Enter/Left-Mouse to progress the story along with a few character choices here and there, along with the obligatory romancing of one of three available characters.  There were hints sprinkled throughout the game that characters were suffering mental health challenges varying from depression to self-harm, but nothing that would really constitute horror.  All of this changed during the second playthrough when the game suddenly functioned as if there were glitches and bugs that occurred to create a feeling of unease.

On my second playthrough though, the first hint that something was wrong, but programmed to be wrong, was that the character of Sayori was eliminated from the game as she had died at the end of my first playthrough; this was due to decisions and choices I made as this is not the only outcome.  However, the game was playing as if it was trying to reconcile that Sayori was supposed to be there but could not figure out what was going on.  At the time, I thought that this was continuing the story where it had left off after the first playthrough and that your character was having a mental break, not being able to come to terms with the fact that Sayori had killed herself and part of your narrative was trying to go about life as normal.  This line of thinking seemed to make sense for a while and that was the way I thought about what was happening, but that quickly changed.

But no, this second playthrough was like a New Game+ with abbreviated dialogue and events that happened during the first playthrough.  When I realized that the game was essentially starting over, I was a little worried that I was going to be fatigued having to go through the exact same story before, albeit without Sayori existing, but thankfully conversations and events were shortened, leaving out previous interactions and abridging the story to a more concise form.  The inclusion of fourth-wall-breaking elements was an unanticipated but very much welcome addition, along with visual elements that were not consistent with the anime art style made the experience all the more unsettling.

There are a number of events and experiences that happened from this point on in the game through the end, but at the same time, I do not want to spoil this entire storyline.  I mentioned that in my first playthrough, I had been building my character's relationship with Yuri, and since Sayroi did not exist, my only options were now Yuri and Natsuki.  I thought about developing my relationship with Natsuki this time around, but there were conversations with Yuri that were reminiscent of my first playthrough and I was intrigued to see how that relationship would develop based on my first time around.  I was genuinely confused as to which character I wanted to romance.  Maybe because of the first playthrough, I felt that my character was getting pulled in the direction of Yuri, although I was not sure if that was based on my first set of choices or because that was what would have happened anyway on my second playthrough.  There was an interesting conversation turned argument between Natsuki and Yuri and as the text on the screen came flying by without actively pressing any buttons as you would normally need to do, you were suddenly given the choice of two buttons, as if you were being asked who you sided with in the argument, but you did not have enough information about what was actually being argued about, or what the question was.

In another event that happened in a similar manner during the first playthrough, Yuri leaves the classroom to get water to make tea.  The first time, my character went with Yuri, but this time she went by herself and was gone for 10+ minutes.  My character then went looking for her and found something disturbing, and then the game rewound to Yuri leaving to go get water.  When my character again went looking for her, the interaction and dialogue were all different with Yuri's eyes and face taking on a different art style with more realistic-looking eyes, which I found very unsettling.  

I have experienced similar feelings and physical reactions to being this unsettled, but only from three short stories that I can recall.  The first was the short story "A City of Churches" by Donald Barthelme, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "The Road Virus Heads North" by Stephen King from his "Everything's Eventual" collection.  All of these stories elicited a physical reaction from me while reading and playing DDLC was the first time since then (then being roughly between the years 2000 and 2003) that I experienced both shivers on the back of my neck and itchiness behind my eyes.  What all of these stories and DDLC have in common are main characters where things are being told (or shown) to them a future of inevitableness that they cannot prevent.  While I recognize that not everyone is going to be unsettled by the same aspects of the game that I was disturbed by, that was just the reaction that I had.

Taking about half as long as the first playthrough, the second playthrough ended in a way that was a little like being shown the monster in a movie and thinking, "Huh. . . okay, that kind of makes sense."  By that point, I was not disturbed or unnerved anymore, just entertained at the story that was told.  The game also had a few additional fourth-wall-breaking events that I will keep to myself that has allowed the game to skip the main menu whenever I turn the game on and the only way to restart from the beginning is to manually alter the game's file folder in my Steam folder, otherwise, I will be stuck in a loop of listening to a character impart cosmic wisdom for eternity.  I am actually pretty tempted to do this to see how the story would unfold if Sayori had not killed herself at the end of the first playthrough and I can think of two possible ways for that to take place, but I am not 100% sure.  I know I could look at a walkthrough, but DDLC is definitely not the type of game that you want to follow a walkthrough if you are genuinely interested in experiencing this game to the fullest.  Yes, gatekeeper-sounding and all that.

I am beyond happy that I decided to play Doki Doki Literature Club! and unknowingly within a month of the game receiving an update from a free-to-play digital game to a regular digital and physical game that includes additional plotlines, updated visuals, more music, and unlockable images.  I am tempted to pick up the game on the Switch, but the PC version is tempting too because of all of the things that come packaged in the game files themselves; you can actually modify your first playthrough of the game by altering specific files before you play.  I am not aware of this functionality on the Switch or other console games.  I am also not sure if I will have similar reactions upon a replay of DDLC or Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!, even choosing different answers and poem options.  Since there are multiple paths to take during both playthroughs, maybe I will go through the game again on PC and see how I feel, then maybe I'll spring for the updated game DDLCP.

Maybe.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian