Video Game Love for the Loveless

It’s the week of Valentine’s Day, and it marks the 24th consecutive Valentine’s Day where I do not have a romantic valentines. This is fine however, romantic entanglements simply take away time from my one true love: video games. However, I am only human, even if I sometimes wish I weren’t, and I desire companionship from a woman. Since I don’t know any single women on a personal level, I’m left with one option. That is joining in with all the other lonely gamers and picking up a dating simulator. And that is where my troubles begin.

I downloaded Doki Doki Literature Club on Steam. It was free and had really good reviews. I thought I was in for a good time, but really my first clue that I wasn’t should have been when it opened with a warning that this game was not for the easily disturbed or children. I just assumed there was some adult elements that warded kids off and I know I’m not easily disturbed because I’ve spent five whole minutes on the internet already. Any part of me that could be disturbed died a long time ago after my dad decided it was okay to let a six-year old child have unlimited and unsupervised access to the internet. But it didn’t prepare me for this masterpiece of terror.

I’ve never played a dating sim, because I never considered myself lonely enough to play one. I still don’t but it made for a good video game to review for my YouTube channel (link at the bottom), I milked nine pages out of the four hour game. Because of this, I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t know anything was off until like halfway through. You see, in a dating sim you build up your relationships with other characters unlocking special dialogue and pictures, learning what their life is like, and then at the end, pick one to end up with. In this particular game there is only five characters, Sayori: your childhood friend who is always smiling. Natsuki, an assertive shorty who’s a bit of a firecracker. Yuri, the quiet intellectual who is most at home in small groups. Monika, the president of the literature club that all the characters are in. And the main character, the player. Of the four girls, you can only build up relationships with the first three but that’s where the game is clever. Let me explain my experience…

I started building my relationship with Sayori, because she was clearly the best choice, the game seemed normal. I got special dialogue, I learned she’s been fighting depression, and at the end the game let me have the main character profess his love and they got together. The next day you go to wake her up for the school festival and you find she’s hanged herself. And the game makes sure you know it wasn’t a quick death. Her hands are bloody, which means when she did it, she didn’t snap her neck immediately. She had to hang as she asphyxiated, then either survival instincts kicked in or she changed her mind and tried clawing the rope off to no avail. The game then ends. Except it doesn’t. It starts over but it’s been rewritten where Sayori is written out of it and the game is clearly breaking all over the place until Yuri also kills herself via knife to the chest. It’s at this point Monika reveals that she’s sentient and has been messing with the game codes to try and get the main character to spend time with her this whole time, going so as far as to make the other characters kill themselves, messing up the game big time in the processes. She then deletes Natsuki who was the only other obstacle between her and the player and then deletes everything else except the player, herself, and the room they were in so they can just spend time together. And if you’re just an absolute moron, that’s where the game ends. Stuck with Monika forever. However, the game makes it very clear you’re supposed to delete Monika’s file which fixes the game even bringing the other girl’s back and making the other world perfect… At first glance.

Sayori is the one who started the club in this alternate version, which means she gains Monika’s omnipotence and becomes obsessed with the player much faster. Monika, who is still swimming around in the code somehow, realizes that the game will never be good, no matter what she does. She then proceeds to delete it to protect the player and sings a song the game’s been teasing the whole time as the credits roll. It is then impossible to launch the game again unless you’re savvy with code. That’s it. I signed up to get a fake girlfriend and what I got was seeing a girl who hanged herself, watching a girl stab herself, and an AI who deleted her own game to protect the player. It was a roller coaster of emotions and I somehow feel like a shell of my former self and a better person… 10/10 Would recommend.

Metacritic also gathered a ton of reviews averaging at a score of 78/100 which can be viewed here.

I made a video about this game viewable here.