On the 22nd of September this year, a free-to-play visual novel named Doki Doki Literature Club
was released on steam.
Although it looks like your standard visual novel on the outside, it gained a lot of popularity
once people actually started looking into it.
Apparently, the game's lead developer Dan Salvato, came up with the idea for the game
because of his own mixed feelings towards anime and his love for unsettling and creepy
themes.
This definitely shows in Literature Club as the entire shtick of the game is that it messes
with your expectations.
The game isn't scary because it has blood, jump-scares and other startling scenes per
se.
If you were to start up a horror game, you'd expect such things and therefore, they may
not be as effective.
You know you're going to get scared.
That's just inevitable.
The point of the game is generating fear, you want to be scared.
It was made to scare you and make you feel creeped out and you know that.
But the only warning we get at the start of Doki Doki Literature Club is a short disclaimer
to not play this game if you are under the age of 13 or if you are easily scared by disturbing
content.
Yes, there is a link that you can click which will tell you the details of the game, but
that's completely optional to read.
Clicking the link will only give you a short warning message about some of the game's themes
and advise you to not play the game if you are struggling with mental health disorders
such as depression or anxiety.
But the warning itself that appears in-game doesn't tell us exactly what the disturbing
content is or when it's going to appear; effectively keeping the players on edge during the entire
time playing the game.
So what exactly is the thing that makes Doki Doki Literature Club so scary?
We're seen subversion's of tropes like this before.
And a lot of visual novels already contain disturbing content, so why is Literature Club
special?
It's because it presents its horror elements really fucking well.
There's not a single sign that anything is wrong in the game until about three hours
in, and at that point we've already been on edge because of the warning at the beginning.
It softly leads us into a false sense of security by holding our hand and making sure we're
as comfortable as possible.
It doesn't start off with a scary story, or a murder scene or anything violent or shocking
for that matter.
It's very much your standard visual novel.
You have the stereotypical character tropes present and each girl's personality is easy
to understand.
Someone who is used to visual novels, would simply be led to believe that the ''disturbing
content'' is part of a bad ending or so.
This is why Literature Club is so scary: because there is scary content where there
isn't supposed to be.
It's not very hard to figure out that the appeal behind romantic visual novels is the
dating.
Getting to spend time with the characters, bonding with them and eventually starting
a relationship is the end goal.
The majority of the audience who play romantic visual novels are often in it for this sake.
The appeal lies in the cute characters, the emotional investment and the romance.
We're not talking about just any visual novels here, because things like horror and mystery
visual novels do of course exist, but those games tend to rely a lot more on their stories.
Whilst most dating visual novels care less about the setting and pour all of their time
into making the CG's off all their characters look the absolutely adorable.
The point of romance visual novels is to sell the characters, sell the chase for a potential
relationship and sell a fantasy, to put it briefly.
So making a game like Doki Doki Literature Club, where everything seems to be just like
your usual romance visual novel suddenly turn dark, is what throws people off.
It's not as scary if you know you're going to be scared.
Back in the early days of the internet, I'm not sure if bringing this up is going to make
me seem old or not but nevertheless, there was a game called ''the red dot.''
Different pictures would appear on the screen with a red dot somewhere on them that you
were supposed to click on.
Each time you managed to find the dot on one of the pictures, the dot would get smaller
and smaller, making you lean in closer and closer to the screen before effectively jump-scaring
you with a bright, flashing image and a loud scream.
Of course, this was only a jump-scare and can't exactly be credited as horror but
my point is that it catches you off guard.
In this innocent game about finding and clicking on a dot, you're suddenly startled by a loud
noise and a flashing image.
Literature Club utilizes the same technique but a lot more complicated of course.
It works to get you invested in the game and its characters before suddenly hitting you
upside the head with a very startling and unsettling scene.
The game attacks you when you least expect it, when your brain is preoccupied with playing
the game and experiencing the romantic visual novel, it suddenly gets scary and catches
us off guard.
Creating an uncanny feeling inside the world where we felt safe just a few moments earlier.
But the game isn't as simple as to only use shocking content to scare the player.
There are several jump-scares in the game, but it also uses other techniques to make
the player feel uneasy.
Like distorting the music, messing up the dialogue, messing with the game files,
deleting characters, breaking the 4th wall and distorting the character
sprites.
All of this adds up to a very alarming experience.
The game takes the sounds, environments, sprites and UI and starts messing with it.
Sometimes, the changes are short-lived and pass by quickly and sometimes they drag on
for entire conversations.
It takes what we've familiarized ourselves with up until that point and starts throwing
us for a loop by making ever so slight changes to it every now and then.
Suddenly cutting the music and blurring a character's facial features or distorting
the music and giving a character photo-realistic eyes is unsettling because that's not how
things are ''supposed to be.''
It looks weird and is just strange enough that it creeps us out without being a jump-scare
every single time.
Not only is the idea of the game itself breaking scary, but the direction that the game takes
with the girls growing increasingly more unstable and paranoid at every turn is scary as hell.
Everyone starts acting strange.
One second they're fine and in the next they're a completely different person.
The girl's characters suddenly aren't easy to read anymore.
They're unpredictable and you can't be of any help.
The longer you play, you'll gradually begin to lose more and more control and there's
nothing you can do about it.
The game will delete your save files, force you into making certain dialogue choices and
remove all menu options.
By continuing to go through the game in this state, you'll soon find out that Monika is
the one who's actively messing with the game as you're playing it by deleting and/or altering
certain files.
It turns out that Monika wasn't given a route by the developer, but because she fell in
love with you, she decided to rework the game in order to give herself a
route.
This included making sure you wouldn't fall in love with any of the other girls as well,
meaning that she rewrote the three other girls to push them to the extreme and make sure
they weren't likable or just simply deleted completely.
Once she's had enough, Monika goes as far as to delete everything except for herself
and the clubroom.
This final scene with Monika is unsettling for several reasons.
First off, it's an eerily calm scene in comparison to what you've just been through for the past
couple of hours.
But she's also addressing you directly, not as in the character in the game but the person
who is currently playing it.
She tells you all about how she made a route for herself in the game by deleting all of
the other girls in order to give herself a happy ending together with you.
The thought of a computer program falling in love with someone who boots it up is already
unsettling, but now it's been given a face and a name as well.
She knows if you're playing the game through Steam or not.
She knows if you're recording the game.
She even gives you detailed instructions on how she went about deleting the other characters.
Which also ends up being her demise as the player can simply go about deleting Monika
in the same manner that she deleted the other three girls and then restart the game.
Although, doing this will eventually lead to the game crashing again after attempting
to start a new game without Monika.
I think Doki Doki Literature Club is about much more than simply subverting tropes.
It's not just about a character realizing that she's in a game, accidentally breaking
the 4th wall.
This is about a character remaking the game and deleting everything,
including the 4th wall.
You, as the player, has the goal of trying to date the girl in the game that you like
and at the same time, Monika has the goal of dating you.
So essentially, Doki Doki Literature Club is about the romantic visual novel that is
furiously trying to date you back.
I hope you enjoyed this video, thank you so much for watching.
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