Just a regular dating sim!

Note: not just a regular dating sim. Also a game that’s really hard to review without spoiling the basic premise, so be aware of that before going in.

The original Doki Doki Literature Club was released in 2017 on Steam and Itch.io for free by Team Salvato, and you can still get that version if you want to play it. This version, which released in June this year, adds a few bells and whistles if you want to shell out a little cash.

Doki Doki Literature Club appears, at first, to be your typical high school dating sim: you play a dude who joins the school’s literature club to try to get closer to a group of girls. To do that, you “write poems” (i.e., pick random words from a list that you think the object of your affection may like) to try and unlock romantic scenes with them. That is, up until the game takes a hard left turn into Whatthefucksville. After that point the game starts to “glitch,” by which I mean random horrifying or strange imagery appears on the screen.

DDLC+ not only discusses but actively depicts themes like suicide, depression, and self-harm that some people may be triggered by. The original version came with a somewhat vague content warning, but DDLC+ gives players the option to view a far more detailed content warning if they wish, at the cost of spoiling the game’s premise. The game is also four years old and was very popular when it came out, though, so I imagine most people know the premise already.

That’s not all the game adds, though. There are also six side stories that you can unlock while playing through the game, with some new music tracks by contributors like Jason Hayes, Azuria Skye,and Nikki Kaeler, in addition to the original soundtrack by the game’s creator Dan Salvato. These side stories do not have any of the horror elements of the main game, mostly just being a cute little story about how the club came to be.

Circling back to those horror elements, the game also has a strong meta element that I was curious to see how they’d pull off on consoles. The original DDLC has moments where it puts files on your computer, as well as moments where you have to manipulate the files yourself in order to continue, which is kind of hard to do on consoles. The developers got around this by creating a virtual desktop that you launch the game from, pretty similar to the one in .hack. What I found odd is that this virtual desktop also shows up in the PC version of the game, where it seems a little unnecessary. But you can unlock and listen to the game’s music, and change the desktop background with equally unlockable images, so that’s fun.

DDLC+ is currently available for the Switch, PS4, PS5, XBOX, and on Steam as a digital download for $14.99. I feel that, for the items that have been added, this is a pretty fair price. The game will also be getting a physical release with a few extras like stickers and a soundtrack download code on September 21, but I am not finding a price for that yet.

I’d say that if you want to experience the definitive version of the game, go for it, but if you’re unsure the free version is still available to give you a taste.

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