The game drops none of its cutesy demeanour throughout all of this – the contrast of presentation and what’s happening somehow makes it worse.īut while the game is horrifying on a number of levels, Doki Doki Literature Club is also tragic, and at its heart is a saddening tale. These moments are haunting and require some deep breaths to get through. Yuri’s OCD takes a horrendous turn too, as she stabs herself in a twisted expression of love, leaving only her corpse behind.
With Monika playing puppet master, Sayori’s depression is amplified so that she becomes suicidal. The text is garbled and their faces begin to disappear or become unsettlingly realistic – Yuri’s large anime eyes are replaced with smaller, more authentic eyes that look around. Monika can also delete the other girls in the game – at one point you have to dig into the game files yourself – but first she contorts and amplifies their most notable personality traits. She also knows if you are recording the gameplay and addresses you about it directly – you, that is, sat at your PC, not the character inside the game. It is a brilliant and unnerving way to break the fourth wall.Īs Monika wants attention from you she moves your cursor when you are making choices and gets rid of alternative routes so that the focus is, eventually, entirely on her.
What spooked me most wasn’t the violence or jump scares, but how the developers wrestle control away from you and put it firmly into the hands of Monika. Once you hit the first, shocking twist you are dragged into its deranged tale, eager to see what could possibly happen next. Fall into this kind of emotion-baiting trap and you, like me, will experience several gut-wrenching horrors before the credits roll.ĭoki Doki’s greatest tool is its ability to surprise. Your typical setup for an uplifting dating sim, right? Wrong. Sayori is depressed, which pulls at your heartstrings and prompts you to become the ray of sunshine in her life. At first, you spend time with the girls as you consider who you would like to date, while hints about the game’s true nature are subtly dropped. It starts with you joining the titular club, of which four girls – Monika, Sayori, Natsuki, and Yuri – are the only other members.
0 kommentar(er)
