Simeng (Grace) Zhang & Emma Claire Vanderven

Introduction

Gameplay Video

https://youtu.be/msc1n57t-L8?si=ddtbBDwadq3th1aA

Basic Game Information

Developer(s) & Publisher(s):

Team Salvato

Designer:

Dan Salvato

Platform(s):

Original: macOS/Windows

Plus: Nintendo Switch/PlayStation 4/Play Station 5/Windows/Xbox One/Xbox Series X/S/macOS

Release Date:

Original - September 22, 2017

Plus! - June 30, 2021

Genre(s):

Visual Novel

Mode(s):

Single-player

Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC) (Team Salvato 2017) is a visual novel game known for its descent from what seems to be an average dating simulator to a frightening, existential commentary on reality and dating simulators themselves.

DDLC follows the tradition of Japanese dating simulations, with a school club setting, poetry mini-games, and four interactive female characters. The game initially creates a happy, innocent atmosphere, and appears to be just another typical cute girl dating simulator. However, this feeling of safety gradually breaks down as the story develops, and the game steadily shifts toward psychological horror. Players will discover that the real horror of DDLC does not lie in sudden jump scares, but in how it erodes trust, manipulates player’s agency, and forces them to confront their unavoidable failures and anxieties.

As more unsettling events occur throughout gameplay, including intentional technological glitches, dialogue that is uncharacteristic of the love interests, and even gruesome scenes that have no place in any ordinary dating simulator, the player is let in on the secret; one of the un-romanceable characters is aware they are in a game and is manipulating it to their advantage.

Throughout DDLC, the focus shifts from the love interests and even the protagonist of the game onto the player itself, blurring lines between the game and real life by breaking the fourth wall in a frightening shift from romance game to horror game.

Autoethnographic Component

I remember the first time I ever played this game, it was with my friend on their computer. We did not know what kind of story we were really in for, only that based on the game’s content warning, it was not going to be as pretty or happy as the cover. I remember before anything truly horrific happened I was even thinking that the story was dragging on a bit. Before I knew it, the first disturbing event was underway, and only more sinister events were to come. This game represents a formative moment in my life since it was one of the first I ever played and because the effect it had on me and my friend was one that left us in a state of shock, not knowing what we just went through together. Between the game’s candid discussions of mental illness, friendship, and autonomy, one can walk away having felt like they were just subjected to witness something revolutionary. The emotional rollercoaster DDLC depicts can leave a lasting impression on your mind, but your heart as well.

The Illusion of Choice

What makes dating simulators such an interesting concept is how depending on the love interest the player chooses, the game will present different corresponding events and endings. The result is as follows: “The player repeats gameplay to discover multiple endings and their corresponding [love interests] as if [player character] repeats the same timeline to meet his promised love”. (Saito 42) DDLC subverts this expectation as the stories’ different paths converge into one canonical ending, but what I find fascinating is how the game developers manipulated this common trope to lead players into a false sense of security. Near the beginning of the game, before the player experiences the horrors to come and is forced into a singular path, you get different events depending on which girl you choose to romance. Before the player is forced into specific choices by the unromanceable character Monika, you have an illusion of choice. This contributes to the player’s false sense of security and highlights how jarring the shift to psychological horror that the game took really was. To make the loss of agency feel even more inevitable and the sensation of being trapped more hopeless, the protagonist of the game, or PC [player character] is oblivious to the coercion happening behind the scenes. He, like the player, is trapped and forced to continue without any real choices, but completely unaware of that fact.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

In psychological horror games, “a connection with the protagonist is usually not only anticipated, but also desirable for better understanding of the story and, often, of the gameplay mechanics as well” (Marak 59). This means players typically rely on resonance with the protagonist to immerse themselves in the narrative and understand the game’s plot. However, DDLC skillfully reverses this expectation. As the story proceeds, the player character or “protagonist” controlled by the player gradually fades into the background, and it is the player themselves who steps into center stage. In the game, Monika, the unromanceable character, breaks the fourth wall by directly calling out the player's name, accessing folders on the player's computer, and even demanding the player personally delete files. The player transforms from an “operator” into the “ protagonist”, and this shift in identity is one of the main reasons for the game’s horror.

This experience resonates with Jesper Juul's “paradox of failure” in The Art of Failure: “We seek out games, although we will likely experience something that we normally avoid” (Juul 31). In other words, players play games that they know will cause them distress. Juul further observes: “This confirms the intuition that though we try to avoid failure while playing, failure nevertheless gives a positive contribution to our evaluation of a game” (Juul 33). In DDLC, this “positive contribution” doesn't stem from the feeling of accomplishment after overcoming challenges, but rather from the accumulation of fear and anxiety.

In horror games, the fear often comes from the combination of uncertainty and obscurity, not direct visual impact. Perron states: “Terror and horror are so far opposite... the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity” (Perron 170) In other words, “terror” does not stem from a clear threat, it comes from something invisible, that state of being unable to fully comprehend or control. In Doki Doki Literature Club! This blurring is reflected in the crash of the game medium itself. When text appears messy and character portraits become distorted, players not just feel uncomfortable with the plot but also experience fear at the medium level. As Perron states, horror games “suspend the player in a state of awe and terror... the player is frozen in a state of uncertainty, in which action is considered but not yet possible” (Perron 172). Players want to quit but are forced to continue, trapped in a passive state. DDLC has created this kind of systematic uncertainty and fear by instability of the medium, such as “files being deleted” and “interface malfunction,” making the terror transcend the plot and directly invade the player's real-life experience.

Community and Fandom

Since the release of Doki Doki Literature Club!, its fan community has remained active. Many players go beyond discussing the storyline and modify and expand the game themselves. For example, the fan-made mod Monika After Story allows players to continue their relationship with Monika. Some even create new side stories, character dialogues, and even alter the game's ending. (Reddit - the Heart of the Internet) These works make DDLC more than just a standalone horror game; they transform it into an ongoing world of storytelling. This phenomenon indicates “The distinction between authors and readers, producers and spectators, creators and interpreters will blend to form a ‘circuit’ of expression, with each participant working to sustain the activity of the others.” (Jenkins 96) Which means in the current media landscape, audiences are not just recipients of information, but participants in the creation of stories. These secondary creations by fans have extended the horror beyond the game itself. “Fans are the most active segment of the media audience... refusing to simply accept what they are given, but rather insisting on the right to become full participants.” (Jenkins 101). In the DDLC universe, the players' recreations are like a form of “collective writing.” They reassemble emotions like terror, love, and loneliness, turning the fear that was originally part of a single narrative into a shared cultural experience within the community.

AI Disclosure

I did not use AI to write this Wiki.

Bibliography

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“Doki Doki Literature Club!” Wikipedia, 15 June 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.

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Joshiball. “Doki Doki Literature Club (Full Game, No Commentary).” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=msc1n57t-L8. Accessed 26 Sept. 2025.

Juul, Jesper. Art of Failure - an Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. MIT Press Ltd, 2013, pp. 31–33.

Marak, Katarzyna. “‘If the Dog Dies, I Quit’: Blair Witch and the Problems of Contemporary Psychological Horror Games.” Studia Humanistyczne AGH, vol. 20, no. 2, 2020, pp. 57–70. https://doi.org/10.7494/human.2021.20.2.57.

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“Reddit - the Heart of the Internet.” Reddit.com, 2018, www.reddit.com/r/MASFandom/comments/1o6m3m4/omg_shes_so_pretty/#lightbox. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

Saito, Kumiko. “From Novels to Video Games: Romantic Love and Narrative Form in Japanese Visual Novels and Romance Adventure Games.” Arts, vol. 10, no. 3, June 2021, p. 42, https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030042.