This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.



Undertale + Hatoful Boyfriend – Originality =

Doki❤ Doki❤ Literature Club! The Game

When I first discovered I was about to play some vidya made by a guy who looked like he was cosplaying the contents of a McDonald’s fryer, I should have known what I was getting into.

Yet it was only when the game finished installing that I fully realized my mistake, as I was instantly subjected to a thousand warnings of muh triggers.

Once is enough, devs. With three tumblr callsigns, I sure as fuck better be heading into A Serbian Game. Yet it was not to be.

Continuing on, but with the sinking feeling I’d be subjected to some shit about as edgy as a circle, I started a new game. …And was immediately beset by music so fucking bad I had to play the entirety of the game on mute.

Here, you suffer too:

Doki Doki is “free”, but make no mistake, you’re paying a significant fee by draining yourself of the 3-4 hours it takes to finish tolerating it. Plus however much the eardrum surgery is.

Seeing as it was my generation of weebs who let the reddit cancer metastasize into the intolerable Crunchyroll kids, I can only atone by warning those literate enough to listen that this is not a game worth playing.

Gameplay

Minigame 1

Though I labeled this Minigame 1, it is also the only minigame. Protip: your choices don’t matter here, nor do they matter during the visual novel sections. Click randomly and save yourself some time.

Art

Players are subjected to a constant recycling of low-budget character cutouts, and backgrounds that look pulled directly from a free VN software package.

But just when you think the game’s $100 budget was spent entirely on blow-ups, there’s HQ art displaying the likes of Miss Frog-eyes here:

Doki Doki Lit Club is what results when art teachers don’t tell students “no”.

Characters

The girls aren’t characters so much as a splattering of cheap tropes, plastered together by someone whose only experience with anime was the bits of conversation he ignored from that morbidly obese chick in high school who wore cat ears every fucking day.

Writing

Rather ironic that a game about literature is so poorly written.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this script was written by an elementary schooler. A stupid one.

Every fucking line has either a “really” or a “just” in it, with laziness permeating through every fucking word. Hell, these two were back to back:

Some of the masturbatory dialogue finds its way into the dark comedy realm at least…

Though it’s not the kind of comedy you laugh with. Check how blatantly oblivious author-kun is:

It’s a sick joke for someone whose writing reads like special ed mad libs to give advice to others.

Hey Dan, you know what voice is? I mean, I know you don’t, but if you did, maybe more than a cursory glance at your own script would make you realize the writing is so flavorless you have no way of knowing who’s talking without their name listed next to the line. Not fucking good.

Fuck, voice isn’t even the worst of this script’s issues. Like, this is written by a man whose experience with a thesaurus clearly ended at the words “dejected” and “quizzically”. Was the game written entirely through the aid of Scrabble Junior?

Finally I understand the point of the game’s warning now. No literate would play this shit beyond the first couple hours if they weren’t guaranteed some ~crazy shocking twists~! So better throw that in their face every chance ya get.

What twists they weren’t.

Plot

Normally I’d warn you about spoilers, but the game so desperately gives itself away that you’d think it was a cosplayer.

Round 1

Your first run through the game will result in several hours of fucking nothing, followed by spazgirl randomly stating she has depression.

After which, she kills herself no matter your previous actions, and the game goes “oh boy, look what we did there, we gave you a VN where your choices didn’t matter, aren’t we original”.

Sure, Doki Doki Club. Keep thinking that.

Round 2

Not satisfied with draining you of one playthrough, you’re begged to play another round. It’ll be different this time, the game swears!

Which would be fine, except the goddamn shitty fucking dialogue is almost word-for-word the exact goddamn same in every scene. Yes I am mad.

Though just to be ~so whacky~ you’ll get superficial glitches thrown at you every now and then.

But those superficial glitches are then replaced by real– oh wait never mind that would be too much work.

More bad text and dev “trickery” happens, and then the hot girl kills herself.

This sets up the grand reveal that the most boring chick is like a virus or something and she corrupted your Doki Doki Literature Club game just to hang out with you or something.

Basic-chan then stares at you for a couple hours until you get bored and delete her game file. This ends round 2, which was all a set-up for round 3! Oh wow! What could we be in for now?

Round 3

Pretty sure I played through this, since I got the ending credits, but I don’t remember a damn thing that happened. What a fucking mess.

Final Score: -0/10.