While attempting to preserve as much of the plot as possible, I’ll just say that Doki Doki succeeds precisely because it does concern itself with agency-both that of the player and that of the digitized representations of humans that are coded to fall in love. Yeah, it’s another game in the sub-genre I like to call: “So you’re having an existential crisis…” Instead, the game forces us to consider: How do our choices influence those around us, and to what extent are we prey to the cultural “coding” that often constrains us in our everyday lives? In the end, it might be more to the credit of the designer that the player isn’t bogged down by a lot of meaningless decisions that wouldn’t directly influence the conclusion. Yes, there are meaningful choices to be made, but often they are few and far between. The music cues, in-program animations, and jarring transitions work together in a way that made the narrative particularly enjoyable, even in the midst of horrific revelations.Īgain, if there’s one clear place where it might seem like the game falters, it could be in the lack of decision points presented to the player throughout the game. Doki Doki is a game that doesn’t necessarily wow outright in its visuals-though they’re finely crafted-but it impresses through its attention to detail.

The poetry mini-game showcases the versatility of the platform, but in the second act, I found myself impressed by the way that the game specifically invokes its source code. Pushing an Open Source Engine to Its Limitsīuilt in the Ren.Py open-source visual novel engine, Doki Doki Literature Club is an impressive feat of coding for reasons that are better left unspoiled. The narrative takes a distinct turn toward genre deconstruction and a meta-awareness that has increasingly crept into more games this year. The second act, though, quickly became interesting and without spoiling too much, it’s understandable why this game has risen to the top of its class in many “Best of” lists for 2017. For the first act I was entertained but I mostly scrolled impatiently through walls of dialogue text. Plot events lead the protagonist to join the titular Literature Club and you can pursue romantic interests by composing “poems” that ask the player to select keywords that appeal to one of the characters.įrom there, I found myself a little surprised at the lack of decision points throughout the narrative. However, the acclaim for Doki Doki Literature Club made me think: sometimes it’s good to try something different.ĭoki Doki Literature Club features a cast of four high school women and one faceless male protagonist. The Persona series carried me a little further into the outskirts of the genre, but that was about it.

I’ve never been a big fan of dating sims or visual novels, except where glimpses of those genres lined up with the romance subplots of games like Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect.

Doki doki literature club run time