You begin participating in poetry reading and writing, where the club becomes a kind of writing workshop. The club begins to meet, welcoming you with each passing week. You’re just here to support your friend Sayori. Furthermore, literature is not your domain of expertise. You feel out of place as the only guy in a club with three intelligent and attractive women. Sayori brings you along to meet the three other members: Natsuki, Yuri, and Monika, the club’s president. The game begins with you, the protagonist, a young man who is asked by his childhood friend Sayori to join her high school literature club. But this story becomes remarkable the more you play through it, the more you unfold the layers within. Mechanically, the game is simple the only user interface is to click through the game’s dialogue as the story unfolds. Some have described Doki Doki as a visual novel, others as a romance game, others as psychological horror. It reminds me of Persona without the RPG elements of battle. And the ‘dating sim’ nature of the game’s structure becomes clear almost immediately. The anime overtones might be welcome, especially for those who are familiar with the trope of high school settings in anime. When you first sit down to play, you may be charmed by the cheery, upbeat music that pulses throughout the story. It’s impossible to understand the nature of Doki Doki on the surface level alone. I was skeptical because it’s hard to imagine a literature club being much of a “game.” I was happily mistaken on both accounts. I was excited because very few games have explicit literary themes, something I’ve tried to wedge into discussion of ludonarratives.
This game exists as evidence of video games thriving as a diverse art form that can tell stories unlike any other kind of media.Īs someone who studies English literature, I was both excited and skeptical to play the (free) Steam game, Doki Doki Literature Club. More than anything, Doki Doki pushes the boundaries between minimalist game mechanics and complex storytelling. It’s a game that shatters genre expectations. It’s a game that breaks the mould in surprising ways. The adorable dating sim Doki Doki Literature Club might be the perfect embodiment of what we here at Epilogue try to highlight and analyze: video games as art, literature, and a storytelling medium.
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