The girls suggest writing poetry as a club activity and this leads to the one of the only forms of interactivity in the game.Īside from making a few choices elsewhere in the game and solving one very light puzzle, most of your playtime consists of just pressing A to read through dialogue. There’s some unspoken tension at the arrival of a new member since it seems all the girls want some of your attention, but everything is presented in a light-hearted, friendly manner.

So, you reluctantly join and everything is pretty innocent. Your childhood friend, Sayori, pressures you into joining the newly formed Literature Club with three other girls. This character is really just supposed to be a stand-in for you. You play as an average schoolboy who is into anime and video games and isn’t really interested in anything else.

It is definitely a narrative you would not be able to reproduce outside of gaming. It uses its medium to mess with the player and tell its story in a similar way to Nier: Automata or MGS2. And it’s a story that can only be told in the format of a video game.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a wild, subversive, smart horror game masquerading as a cute dating sim.

Doki doki literature club fan game