Date of Review: 10/01/2018
Score: 9
OpenCritic Link: https://www.opencritic.com/game/5068/doki-doki-literature-club
Link to Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/698780/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club/
Price: Free
Doki Doki Literature Club – Review
Play this game, just play it.
I’m trying to not give much away, because it’s less of a game & more an experience.
The premise of the game is as a highschool student, your longtime friend & next-door neighbour guilts you into joining the Literature Club, at which point you realise there’s 4 cute girls for you to get to know & try to impress. You do so by “writing poems” which is a mini-game where you select words to place in the poem. You get 20 words to select on a rotation of choices & the selected words improve how much the different girls approve of your poem. They also share their poetry with you to which give you more insight into their personalities to allow you to better tailor your next poem… at least that’s the premise.
I’m not a fan of the Japanese Visual Novel or Dating Sim style games… but that’s just the facade that this game hides behind. What this game really is, is a mind-fuck of EPIC proportions.
It’s a psychological horror that tweaks the onscreen display during the game so that you stop & go “did I just see that?”. Also the background music is perfectly done, as it starts off all cutesy & chirpy, but as different things happen, you get dissonance & off key notes that aren’t always jarring… just noticeable.
As such the mature warning is to do with the themes that run through this game & the way it makes you deal with them. Definitely not for kids, but not because of what you’d first expect.
The game took me about 5hrs to finish the first full playthrough, but there’s definitely a alternate endings to unlock… which probably are dependent on how many times you play it.
I like games like this, they surprise & entertain. This is well worth the asking price 
and I’m likely to throw money towards the developer as a gesture of appreciation.