DOKI DOKI LITTERATURE CLUB PLUS

You are seeing only what the creator of that narrative wants you to see. Likewise, the metafictional framing of DDLC+ ensures you canвЂ™t forget that this is just a narrative. The concord between player and game doesnвЂ™t get to be re-erected in the wake of that. This insight enables her to manipulate the objective world around her, ramping up the negative personality traits of the other characters to achieve the happy ending she is otherwise incapable of having. But ultimately, none of that matters because Monika is aware of her existence within a video game. You go through the motions that the game seems to demand: composing poems, making choices. You are positioned as you вЂ“ the player rather than the player-character вЂ“ and you become the direct addressee of MonikaвЂ™s obsession. While games often lock additional content behind progression or particular achievements, the effect of doing so is different here.ДDLC doesnвЂ™t just break the fourth wall with a casual wink towards the player a la Metal Gear Solid it shatters the fourth wall. They are tucked within the broader package of DDLC+ and gated behind multiple playthroughs of the main story. The thing isвЂ¦ the Side Stories donвЂ™t exist in isolation. Their depictions feel like statements of genuine understanding for the struggles against depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or trauma. Taken on their own, these snippets offer gentler portrayals of mental illness. Side Stories comprise half a dozen new stories that explore the origins of the Literature Club and the relationships between the four girls in it before the player came onto the scene. The game may be widely loved, but that doesnвЂ™t make it blameless.ДDLC+ Side Stories were an opportunity for redemption вЂ“ an opportunity grasped at but not quite reached. On one hand, thatвЂ™s part of what makes DDLC so memorable on the other, it finds a home within the broader social contexts of stigmatization and stereotyping of mental illness. Heightened as the depictions of mental illness are for most of the playerвЂ™s time with the game, they lack the nuance to seem truly earnest. To the developersвЂ™ credit, they try to justify the extreme portrayals through the gameвЂ™s fourth wall-breaking meta-awareness of its constructedness, but the shocks are too shocking.

Its cutesy aesthetic belies a troubling narrative that plays up mental health issues for shock value. Not for nothing is DDLC considered a psychological thriller.

Instead, the new DDLC+ Side Stories play out as straightforward visual novel narratives, with you as the player providing all of the discomfiting undercurrent. The recent re-release adds hours of new content that fills in the narrative background without trying to repeat past tricks. Anyone who played the original version can surely attest to its ability to disturb by subverting convention and playing with the fourth wall.

DOKI DOKI LITTERATURE CLUB PLUS

This article contains spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club Plus (DDLC+ ) and its Side Stories.Дoki Doki Literature Club Plus! is unsettling.

Doki doki litterature club