Even the Golden Ending is sad, because you still know that the President of the club is self-aware, and experiences actual pain and disorientation whenever the game isn’t running… and who knows what state the vestige of Monika is in

(and even Doctor Who had an episode touching on the same elements for horror ( Extremis, episode 6 of series 10), which actually came out a few months before DDLC did…)Īlso, it’s super depressing in its general theme. I don’t think there’s anything much of interest which DDLC is trying to do which wasn’t done before it. “Person becomes aware of fourth-wall / sentient and how controlled everyone else is… and then does horrible things to try to break out of it” is something that’s been done before DDLC was written, and better. I avoid “horror” games, but I’d not even really consider this to be in that genre - it’s depressing and arguably nihilistic, but there’s nothing I really found scary about the game, and the gore elements are fairly limited and don’t hit on my specific triggers for that kind of thing.

And they detract significantly from what good there is in the actual game itself. Getting the easy complaint out of the way first: glitch “scares” and silly attempts at shock jump scares are childish and were old-hat at the time DDLC was first made. Now, as far as the plot itself goes, (all the rest in spoiler tags in case someone else is like me and missed on playing this until now). He’s clueless at best, and a jerk at his worst points.ĬW warnings for some of the below: suicide, self-harm, mental illness He might be that way because he’s also an 18 year old who’s not good at dealing with his own feelings of vulnerability, but still. Part of this is just that as far as I can tell from the little I know about the genre, all romantic visual novel protagonists seem to start as self-absorbed jerks, and for all of the attempts of DDLC to tell you that you’re super attentive and kind… the protagonist is still basically an asshole.

So, since it’s free / pay what you want, I started with Doki Doki Literature Club… which I have to say I have super conflicted feelings about. The kind of games that mostly got a bunch of press covered in “don’t read this because it’s hard not to spoil things in any discussion” warnings. So, I decided to (before starting Heaven’s Vault, which seems like a bigger game) decided to try and catch up with a few shorter games I missed in the last few years with “hidden reveals”.

Doki doki literature club monika ending