The next game on the list is one I’ve admittedly been really invested in recently. It’s the kind of game I find hard to stop thinking about, which I find kind of curious because it takes a rare mix of elements to get me obsessed and interested with a piece of fiction. A lot of the time I’m pretty happy to just play something and then move on. Well, that’s probably not entirely true – I do give most things I enjoy a thorough dissection in my mind, read reviews, and so on – but I’m finding this one hard to move on from. Maybe it’s my own personal experience? Maybe it just scratched exactly the right itch? At any rate, the next game I’d like to talk about is…

5) Doki Doki Literature Club Plus | Team Salvato
“Surreal horror is often very successful at changing the way you view the world, if only for a brief moment.”

I was never much of a manga or anime person before this year. This year, though, I needed some lighter fare to snack on outside of weighty academic textbooks or slow-moving fantasy novels, my usual reading material. I dipped into both horror and slice-of-life for both, loving the smaller stories that were relaxing, intimate, and heartwarming. Turns out I’m still as huge a romantic as I remembered. I also loved the creeping dread and malevolence behind the best horror manga I could find. So I finally turned to Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, which had been sitting in my library for some time, and which had been recommended to me way back when it came out. Had I played it? No. Not until this year. Did I love it? Yes. Should I have played it when it was recommended to me? Definitely.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a game that’s been raved and ranted about enough on the internet, but I found myself impressed by how well the game was actually written. The game does initially seem just like a sugary dating simulator (which I honestly wouldn’t have minded), but swiftly becomes something more by making sure you don’t see the members of the Literature Club merely as one-dimensional objects to be obtained. Each member of the club has their own struggles with mental health, and in the first act of the game in particular, I was impressed by how well these themes were handled. The subtle hints that not all is well with the mental state of each girl combined with the saccharine music and cutesy art. It all builds to one of the most infamous moments in recent horror game history, which had long since been spoiled for me. Nonetheless, I found that moment punchy and effective – and not just because of the shock value inherent to it. No, I enjoyed the moment because it was a culmination of the themes of the first act, and the tipping point where the rest of the game derailed.

The second act of the game is still effective, but a bit less so. It often leans a bit too hard into horror that doesn’t mesh with the game’s themes – distorted breathing sound effects, bleeding eyes, and other common indicators of “internet horror” – but there were still some fiendishly effective moments here. The best moments of this act come from the psychological disjunction between what characters want to do and what they can do. The limitations of the game itself are turned against certain characters, making them act in ways that they know are harmful and irrational, but they can’t help themselves. It is disturbing watching these characters that I had genuinely already come to care for run themselves into the ground – or be run deliberately into the ground by someone else.

The final sections of the game problematize our relationship to video game characters. They can develop into a kind of parasocial one, where well-written characters can come to dominate our thoughts. In Doki Doki, the relationship is reversed, where the character has such an intense desire to get to know you that it feels off-putting. Yet the game also prompts you to feel a deep sympathy for that character. Instead of the player wishing that she was real, the character wishes that you were able to have a more genuine interaction with her. The limitation of the game’s interface and design is itself weaponized against yourself and the character, giving the horror a tangible effect on the computer itself.

There is much to be said about the machines on which we play games. Expensive consoles and computers and phones are the vessels through which we play video games. But players so rarely consider them while they play. As a result, what they mean to us as players feels obscure or irrelevant. Why focus on the machine if it has little bearing on the game itself? Doki Doki foregrounds the machine and the architecture on which you play. While it might not prompt us to consider broader hierarchies of power in the real world, having to delve into your computer’s file system to beat the game means that the artifice of the game is laid bare. And while I say that hierarchies of power are not called into question – such as the production lines and planned obsolescence of the machines we use – Doki Doki challenges the dominance of the player. What right do we have to play god with characters’ lives? Where should human empathy come in? I’ve heard players compare the manipulation of characters in Doki Doki to how human players treat their Sims by torturing them. While they might not be human, we should at least ask – what does this mean for us as human beings? What entertainment is there to be gained from the dehumanization of characters that appear human?

Note that I write above artifice rather than artificial – a distinction I’ve come to learn means a lot this year. The craft and care put into each moment of Doki Doki is evident, resulting in a game that falls apart just as beautifully as it is put together.

The way that the game manages to bring up mental health without stigmatizing it impressed me, though having done a bit of lingering in the online fan communities, I’ve seen that many of the mental health messages weren’t exactly absorbed – though it is the internet, what could one expect? Still, I saw bits of myself all through the writing of this game – not necessarily a good thing, but one worth recognizing.

Doki Doki Literature Club, even when it slips into over-the-top horror stuff, still manages to be genuinely touching and disturbing in equal measure. You just want everything to end up okay, but the more you play, the more impossible that prospect seems. I’ve actually ended up installing a bunch of mods for the game just to try and give some of the characters happy endings, which has been a nice way to relax at the end of the year.

The Plus version of the game also adds some side stories that give everyone even more personality and character interactions, which are all pretty sweet and devoid of the overt horror present in the main game. Hell, maybe I’m just in the mood for comfort fiction, where characters with problems have the support networks there to just have sickeningly sweet scenes of hugs and lengthy discussions about their favourite books. If that’s the case, then I’m pretty easy to please 🙂