Note: This post will contain full spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club. Consider yourself warned if you haven't played it, but let's talk about why you haven't played it. It's cheap (free), short, and good, so you really have no excuse. Go download it right now. Play it. Then come back and read my two cents.
I have never played (read?) a visual novel before; the closest I've ever come is Fire Emblem. However, every October, like many Americans, I develop a hunger for media that may scare me. I'm not trying to be a tough guy, but it's hard for me to find scary things. So far this season, I've tried novels, comic books, TV shows, and movies, but all to no avail. I read a Kotaku post about a terrifying visual novel called Doki Doki Literature Club, and decided to try it out. It was absolutely successful at scaring me, but more than that, it made me really sad.
DDLC sets itself up as a cutesy yet stereotypical dating sim, and part of the game's fright power is in the juxtaposition between the pink happiness and the tragedies and nightmare fuel that come later. This is apparent right from the start, as this game has a stark and somewhat lengthy content advisory. Going from the advisory to the colorful Japanese main menu made me immediately feel that something was off.
If you still haven't played it despite my above argument, the game follows a generic male high school student (who takes the player's name) and his happy-go-lucky childhood friend, Sayori, as they join the school's Literature Club. The other club members are popular and perfect president Monika, introverted and brainy Yuri, and cute and feisty Natsumi. The protagonist joins the club with the ulterior motive of trying to impress these 'beautiful girls' in the club. You impress them by writing a poem that they would enjoy, which is done by a mini game where you pick words that one of the girls will like. As you get to know the characters, you get subtle hints that these girls are not the living tropes that they appear to be, but all have some complex baggage.
As the first part of the game progresses at a slow-burn pace (just right for letting you get the perfect level of "attached" to the characters). I initially pursued Yuri, whose mystery and shyness intrigued me. During one of our daily walks home, Sayori asked what I would do if Yuri wanted to walk home with me one day. Would I choose to walk with her, or Sayori? Trying to be honest, I chose Yuri, and Sayori seemed supportive with a hint of disappointment. The next day, Sayori, usually energetic and the heart and soul of the club, is quiet and distant. I invited Yuri over to work on the Literature Club's presentation for a school festival over the weekend. Before Yuri comes over, I go over to Sayori's house to check on her. When pressed, she confesses that she has severe depression and has been trying to hide it from me her whole life. Her personal sense of worthlessness makes her feel unworthy of the affection of others, so she pushed me to join the club so I could spend time with new people. She says that she doesn't want me to worry about her, even though that's the exact opposite of what my character does. I leave, and spend a pleasant and slightly romantic afternoon with Yuri. I had almost forgotten about Sayori.
As I walk Yuri to the door, we seem on the verge of a romantic moment, when Sayori suddenly shows up. This startles Yuri, who quickly leaves. Sayori confesses her love for me, but, still interested in Yuri, I promise that I will always be Sayori's lifelong friend (I know, I'm horrible). She states that she also thinks this is best, and we agree to spend the festival together.
The next morning, there is no music, and Sayori fails to meet me to walk to school. As I get to school, I look at the printed poem that Sayori was going to read for the festival, and get a shiver down my spine when I read its twisted contents. My character rushes to Sayori's house, and the game completely takes a turn for the horrid. The image of Saryori's delicate body hanging from the noose is burned into my brain.
The game has previously encouraged the player to save often, so I try to go back and see if I could have prevented this. The game informs me that the save file is corrupted, and starts a new game where Sayori doesn't exist. All sorts of weird glitches, strange text, and warped music occur, and the player almost completely loses control of the game. Eventually it is revealed that Monika, whom the player never had the opportunity to woo, was a self-aware game character who wanted to spend time with me, the person (as opposed to the character). She was the one who pushed Sayori to kill herself, and eventually deleted the other two girls as well.
I'll be honest, the second act of the game, what with the glitches, terrifying text, and strange behavior of the characters, was terrifying. The dev was clearly trying to push the boundaries of interactive media and did so in a remarkable way. For me, however, this wasn't the games biggest impact.
The worst part of the game for me is absolutely Sayori's suicide. During my first run of the game, I wrote her off as a boring, stereotypical character. And while the depression conversation made me look beyond the surface, I didn't fully appreciate her as a character until after she took her own life. As I played through again, I found all sorts of hints of her condition in her dialogue and poetry that I didn't notice the first time. And the most frustrating part was that no matter what you did to try to help her, she still continued to be internally miserable. If you pursued others, her heart broke due to her affections for you. If you tried to love her back, she is plagued with the guilt of her perceived unworthiness of your affection.
And I think this is where the game got a little too real for me. Both personally and professionally, I've crossed paths with countless people that suffer from clinical depression. The game did an excellent job of giving me a firsthand experience with what it must feel like to be depressed. It took this one step further with the suicide. I have been so fortunate to never have known someone personally who has taken their own life, but this game has given me a small taste of what that must feel like. It made me feel the shock and guilt that loved ones of suicide victims must feel on an exponentially greater scale.
As good as the second act of the game was, it did somewhat take away from the impact of Sayori's suicide. We find out that Monika pushed Sayori to suicide, then later deleted her from the game. This de-humanizes Sayori as a character and lessens the contribution of her depression to her ultimate fate. Is this nitpicky? Of course, but I think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the eventual revelation of the game.
Luckily, the game provides a fulfilling ending, but it, like Sayori, is bittersweet. I loved the glitches, lack of control, and gore provided in the second act, but ultimately, the game hit me right in the feels by the least-bizarre horror the game threw at me. It changed the way I view both loved ones and patients that deal with depression, and for that, I am extremely grateful. Even if I'm still sad.
