Astaroth
[*screaming into the void intensifies*]
Original poster
STAFF MEMBER
DONATING MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
- Invitation Status
- Not accepting invites at this time
- Posting Speed
- Speed of Light
- Slow As Molasses
- Online Availability
- It varies a lot depending on my schedule, unfortunately.
- Writing Levels
- Advanced
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Primarily Prefer Male
- Genres
- Psychological horror
Body horror
Supernatural
Giallo
Splatterpunk
Dark fantasy
Historical
Low fantasy
Magipunk
Weird West
Noir
Thriller
Gothic horror
Southern Gothic
Gaslamp fantasy
Cyberpunk
Space saga
Clockpunk
Space Western
Space opera
Paranormal
Modern fantasy
Dieselpunk
Post-Apocalyptic
Crime drama
Medieval fantasy
red
Image-heavy thread, NSFW content.
The game opens with a warning:
Gird your loins, children. It's time for Doki Doki Literature Club.
The first time you run the game, it asks you to verify that you're okay with adult themes and stuff that might trigger anxiety or depression. It also asks you your name. I absolutely do not want to have anime girls squealing my name and do not want to project myself onto this protagonist like a lonely otaku dweeb, so we'll have to pick another name for our intrepid hero.
Hmm...
Perfect.
-
Hi, Monika here!
Welcome to the Literature Club! It's always been a dream of mine to make something special out of the things I love. Now that you're a club member, you can help me make that dream come true in this cute game!
Every day is full of chit-chat and fun activities with all of my adorable and unique club members:
Sayori, the youthful bundle of sunshine who values happiness the most;
Natsuki, the deceivingly cute girl who packs an assertive punch;
Yuri, the timid and mysterious one who finds comfort in the world of books;
...And, of course, Monika, the leader of the club! That's me!
I'm super excited for you to make friends with everyone and help the Literature Club become a more intimate place for all my members. But I can tell already that you're a sweetheart—will you promise to spend the most time with me? ♥
This game is not suitable for children
or those who are easily disturbed.
Doki Doki Literature Club is an indie visual novel by "Team Salvato", a.k.a. Dan Salvato. It follows the stories of a bunch of anime kids in a high school literature club. I first heard of this game because popular Let's Play gamer VoidBurger did a stream where she played this.
I think there's maybe porn in it?
But I'm playing it because I've heard things, which I won't get into for now. Let's just say I'm interested for similar reasons to my interest in another indie VN called Hatoful Boyfriend. That brings me to the rules:
red 1. NO SPOILERS, please. I am going into this blind and would like to keep it that way. Other people reading along may likewise not want to know what's in store for us.
2. This will be a screenshot and text commentary LP. Sorry, I am lazy and don't feel like going through the hassle of anything more. I will also not be including full text transcripts because lol nah. Please don't complain about my format or my shitty screencaps. I'm doing this for kicks, yo.
Also I'll probably take a while to post updates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3. If there is porn in this game, I'm not posting porn. You may get hilarious substitute images. We'll see if I get that far.
4. Like the disclaimer at the top there, this will contain potentially disturbing content. Don't read it if you can't handle that. Don't post pictures except under spoilers though if you want to share stuff that is sketchy.
5. I'm poking fun at the game and at anime a lot. It's all in good jest. I don't mean to offend anyone who likes this game or anime in general, so please don't feel you need to defend either one.
6. If you want to play along, awesome! Just remember rule #1.
Doki Doki Literature Club is free to play on Steam.
-
Once we start up, Jorick is immediately assaulted by the token annoying childhood friend. The game really dumps you straight into the action.
In case you think I'm being judgmental about the character, by the way, Jorick actually describes her in his internal monologue as "annoying". Jorick is kind of a dick, though, to be fair.
This is Sayori. She's Jorick's neighbor, and they walk to school together on days when she doesn't oversleep (but most days she does). Jorick claims they're friends, but he mostly acts like she's a huge inconvenience and shit-talks her to her face. She, of course, takes it all with a sunny disposition. It wouldn't seem so dickish if she dealt it right back, but the one-sided direction of the shit-talking gives it a different tone.
On the way to school, Sayori reminds Jorick about picking an after-school club this year. (Oh em gee you guys, I wonder which club it'll be???) Jorick is utterly uninterested in joining any club, but apparently the fucker promised Sayori and then forgot.
Jorick would rather just hang out alone with his animu and magna, it seems. Sayori expressly states her concern that he's going to end up a NEET. In the end, he promises to at least check out what's available.
School itself is so boring that we skip straight to the end of the day. Jorick has his priorities in order:
Sayori has other ideas, however. Seems that she really just wanted Jorick to join the club that she's in, which...
Really? This girl is the Vice President of a Literature Club?
Jorick, for his part, has zero interest in literature and would rather go hang out with his otaku brethren. But Sayori insists; she already promised her club that he'd be joining. Jorick agrees to go see what it's all about once she bribes him with cupcakes.
Oh Jorick. So dramatic.
We make our way to the classroom where the Literature Club meets. The game introduces all three of the other club members in quick succession. One of them even knows our hero's name, kyaaa~
I feel ya, bruh.
Jorick's shitty attitude seems to improve once he realizes the club is full of cute pixels, though. Let's review our leading ladies, shall we?
Natsuki, a first-year, is obviously the tsundere of the group. She's also a tiny pink-haired moeblob who reads manga and bakes cupcakes and likes "cute" things. I already hate her. The game seems to be aware of her being a walking stereotype, and cracks a, uh... joke...
...8|
Moving on:
Monika is the only one with a sassy action pose and is the club President. Her informed traits seem to stop at "most popular girl in school because she's awesome at everything" and "club president". I like her flippy hair, though. Jorick doesn't really know her, but they've been in the same class before.
Finally:
Yandere detected.
Yuri is the smart, bookish one and the only one of these kids who seems to be enthusiastic about the actual subject of the club. She's also shy and socially awkward, and has a tendency to wordvomit about whatever she's been reading lately.
After we're introduced to the harem, there's an impromptu tea party and I feel my eyes glazing over. There's going to be a lot of summarizing in this LP, and I apologize. It's because this dialogue is just not interesting. I didn't enjoy reading it, so I won't be faithfully screencapping it or transcribing it for you, either. I promise to get all the interesting bits in future; I was a little lazy in this first session, and there wasn't much of interest to get in the first place.
Anyway. They finally ask Jorick how he ended up coming to the club meeting, and he wisely chooses not to tell them that he didn't come willingly. He quickly changes the subject to why Monika decided to start the Literature Club, and they talk about club politics and how starting new clubs is hard and they haven't had much luck growing the club. Jorick realizes that this is why they were so stoked to get a new member.
Next they grill Jorick about what kind of stuff he likes to read. Turns out our main man isn't much of a reader. He mostly sticks to manga.
The girls then share their own preferences. Natsuki likes cute manga, presumably shoujo, and hates horror. She also likes poetry. Yuri likes fantasy with complex worldbuilding, and she likes psychological thrillers and horror as well. Yuri talks the longest by far about her tastes. Monika, intriguingly, says absolutely nothing about hers despite being the club president.
Jorick chimes in that he's read a horror book once. :U
Turns out Natsuki and Yuri have also both practiced writing, but are shy about sharing their material. Monika suggests an assignment: Everyone writes a poem to read at the next club meeting, so everyone can be equally embarrassed. Bitch, Jorick already has enough homework, c'mon! (...Probably? I mean, we skipped all of the actual school day, so maybe it's not that intensive.)
Jorick chooses this moment to tell them that he's never actually agreed to join the club. This elicits universal pouting. Their sprites actually sink on the screen like they've been cast down into the depths of despair.
Jorick can't resist those puppy faces, though.
(Side note, this is an example of why you should be careful with sassy action poses for sprites. When you lump a bunch of them together on the screen, you get strategically-placed ponytails trying to become overblown mustaches.)
Although Jorick agrees to join the club in the end, he seems a little concerned about actually producing a poem.
Cheer up dude. Just because Götterdämmerung is garbage, doesn't mean you're a mediocre writer. :U
(*Ducks mobs of angry fans*)
Sayori offers to walk home with Jorick, now that they'll actually be leaving at the same time every day, and he spends the duration thinking about all the hot girls he suddenly knows. He is not so psyched about Literature Club in theory, but he figures maybe he can score a date out of it, at least.
Now we get to the first part of the game that isn't pure VN-style:
The poetry, uh... "minigame"? consists of picking 20 seemingly random words from as many pages, one per page. (I was a little disappointed by that last part, because the first page was a goldmine.) Meanwhile the little chibis hop around at the bottom of the screen like hungry birds waiting for you to give them crumbs.
Some of the word choices are pretty amusing.
lol 4/20
Effulgent.
Obviously, we're going to pick the most pretentious and edgy words possible. Jorick is from the LiveJournal and MySpace generation. He is a wounded soul. We must stay true to his character.
I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work out, but I am left to assume that this is our poem, since the game does not tell me otherwise:
fester hope meager ambient crimson misfortune inferno whirlwind vertigo infallible cage incongruent heartbeat heavensent despise effulgent anxiety tenacious entropy eternity
Keep trying, bub. It's supposed to have meter, though.
We skip immediately to the next club meeting, because we don't have a life other than this club anymore. School? What is that? The place where club happens, that's what.
Natsuki gives Jorick shit the moment he walks in the door because she found out he didn't even want to join the club. The other members give her shit right back, since she's the resident manga freak. Natsuki gets indignant.
Oh, you're one of those. 8|
Sayori, meanwhile, is quick to defend her good buddy Jorick.
She brings up how he's always taking care of her, cooking for her or cleaning her room. Jorick shows his gratitude the best way he knows how:
Savage.
Next, Sayori shows her exemplary lack of social grace and mentions out of the blue that Yuri bought Jorick a present. Turns out the huge nerd was excited enough about a new possible reading buddy to buy him a book! Animu blushu uguu~
Instead of doing actual club activities, or I don't know, reading these poems everyone wrote, the club breaks up to sit around the room and just do whatever bullshit they feel like. Jorick notices that Yuri is reading a book, and that it's the very same book she gifted to him. Gasp!
She catches him staring like a creeper. They have a supremely awkward conversation, where she denies buying two copies of the same book for any particular reason, nossirree, and Jorick finally checks out the cover of his present.
Oh boy.
(This is not a real book. My best guess is it's a reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, especially since it's noted as being a short read. Not that the content is similar, as you'll see.)
Yuri explains the plot:
Suddenly, Jorick is not so happy about getting free stuff anymore.
Yuri goes on a long, somewhat creepy ramble about villainous intent and dark motivations. Jorick thinks it's cute, predictably. There's some more awkward fumbling as they decide to sit next to each other and read side-by-side. Jorick catches her reading his copy of the book over his shoulder, and instead of being bothered by this like any normal human being, he proposes that they just share the book between them.
What follows is our first splash CG and an extremely bizarre sequence.
What. That's such a weird description-
Oh okay I guess this is going to be a cute flirty thing-
...
S E X Y B O O K R E A D I N G T I M E
As they're reading, sexily, Jorick muses that the protagonist of the story reminds him of Yuri because they both apologize a lot. This doesn't go over well.
At least, not until he calls her cute. Then, of course, she's blushing and stammering some more.
I don't know if this scene occurs at random, is the same no matter what, or is determined by your word selection during the poem minigame. We'll have to get further into the game to find out.
Whatever the case, Monika interrupts this strange interlude to cockblock Jorick with a demand for actual club activities at last. This catches Yuri off guard and prompts her to commit a small act of violence. The victim of her misdirected anger is our poor protagonist.
Fucking rude! Jorick takes it in stride, though. He makes a promise with Yuri to read more together later, but they agree it's fine for him to read a couple of chapters on his own first. This once again feels more like homework than fun, but I guess Jorick's a nerd at heart after all. Good to see he's found his true home.
It's time to read poems, bitches!
Come on, Jorick, suck it up. I'm the one who publicly agreed to play this game.
Now Doki Doki Literature Club prompts us with our first true choice, and it's a doozy.
Who will Jorick choose to share his angst-ridden, terrible "poem" with before anyone else? Which girl is going to be his Literature Lover? His Book Club Bae?
FIND OUT NEXT TIME AFTER YOUR VOTE!
