Doki Doki Literature Club: Virtuality and Reality

Spoilers alert!

Doki Doki Literature Club (abbreviated as DDLC below) is a visual novel released on September 2017. It is based on the Ren’Py engine, and supports Windows, Linux and macOS. It tells the story between the Lit Club and the player.

Yes, it’s a story with the player himself, the same as my previous post about OneShot. It is a game with rich metafictional elements, otherwise DDLC would just become a normal, trivial dating-sim game: “Well, it’s just about favorability, right? Even this game is somewhat hard, Save/Load will just solve any problem!”

But it doesn’t.

My First Impression & Game Plot

I found this game on last third of October (or November) last year, and began playing. In fact, I had been spoiled about this game. I actually knew this is a horror game, and one of these characters will hang herself at the end of Act 1, and everything becomes abnormal, etc.

I was not so brave enough, so I dragged one of my roommates to play this game.

Act 1

It looks like a normal game. There are 4 characters: Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri, and the president of the Lit Club, Monika. 4 girls. Daily routine is to write poems and choose options for one of these girls’ favor… Well, where is Monika’s options? I can neither write any poems to Monika. As an English learner, I could feel my vocabulary was not enough for writing poems in this game.

At the end of Act 1, when Sayori is found out to have serious depression, things become strange. Whether you confess to Sayori or not does not affect the ending. On the morning of the last day, the protagonist finds Sayori’s weird poem.

Get out of my head before I do what I know is best for you.

Get out of my head before I listen to everything she said to me.

Get out of my head before I show you how much I love you.

Get out of my head before I finish writing this poem.

 

But a poem is never actually finished.

It just stops moving.

(A part of her poem)

Our protagonist returns to Sayori’s home, only to find out her hanging in her room. The face close-up of Sayori even makes this scene more uncomfortable. Even though I knew this is the ending before, it still scared me a lot. And then, the game “crashes”, and returns to the main menu.

Act 2

“You like Save/Load?”

The horror elements begin to show up from the end of Act 1. The texture of Sayori in the main menu is covered by the other characters, and the text glitches. If you try loading the save file in the Act 1, the game reports an error, and directly starts Act 2. In Act 2, the existence of Sayori is almost completely erased. Although in the beginning you can feel her in glitches and errors, she leaves this story shortly after that.

Then, glitches, texture errors and other horror “special effects” frequently come to screen. Scenes that maybe frightening and disturbing includes but not limited to:

• Natsuki with “90° broken neck”.
• Natsuki with her facial features covered by random black squares.
• The protagonist discovers Yuri self-harming herself, then the game rewinds.
• Yuri’s poem with blood.
• The background turns black when chatting with Yuri, and her texture gets larger and broken.
• Yuri’s face changes suddenly when writing poems.
• A poster of Sayori hanging herself put up behind the club room.
• Monika flashes when you click “History”.

Some frightening scenes appear by random. I have to admit that I got scared, and have to cover half of my screen by my hand to get continued. By the way, some “special poems” will get to you in Act 2, which ambiguously express the thoughts of characters.

No matter what you choose, it’s Yuri’s plot in the end, and you could notice she is getting madder and madder. At last you choose whether to accept Yuri’s confession, but after experiencing Act 1, you can probably guess what will happen next. Yuri kills herself with her knife. Then, the protagonist watches her corpse for three days (time in the game). You have to watch it for some time even if you enable the “Skip” function.

Here comes a new day. Natsuki comes to school, discovers the corpse, vomits and leaves. Monika comes, and deletes all other characters, restarts the game.

Act 3

It’s Monika and you only, in the empty club room.

I felt calm after seeing Monika here, but I did’t know why. I could feel that no more jump scares after all this happens. (Well, if you are using OBS or XSplit, it will be different.) She will tell you that she loves you, rather than the protagonist. She admits for making other characters mad, modifying game scripts, and resulting in horror scenes. As the only one who knows the “real world”, she wants a happy ending, but always fails.

You cannot save, load or skip here. Just Monika, and just Monika chatting with you.

Monika will talk about many topics, including her feelings after you close the game, whether God exists, sleeping quality, and social media, etc. She even gets a Twitter account. But a sad thing to me is that this scene is CPU-intensive.

It’s not difficult to get into the Act 4. Monika keeps reminding us where her character file is, and telling us not to delete it. So after deleting or moving the monika.chr, you can leave the lonely club room.

But, in fact I also consider that, this scene can be an ending of this game.¹

Act 4

Monika realizes how horrific she does to the other characters, and restores the backup of other files.

A sunny morning, and you are going to school with Sayori. Sayori starts Lit Club at this time. Everything seems OK, without Monika.

But in the end, when there’s only Sayori in the club room:

“I really want to thank you.”

“I mean, I’m really happy that you joined the club and everything…”

“But the truth is, I already knew you were going to.”

“Ehehe~”

“There’s actually something else.”

“I wanted to thank you for getting rid of Monika.”

Oh no! Then, Sayori tries to do the same as Monika. But at that time, Monika comes, and deletes Sayori, and deletes everything when credits playing, only leaving a letter in the end. You cannot play it any more without modifying game files.

“I finally understand. The Literature Club is truly a place where no happiness can be found.”

(From the last letter of Monika)

Every president of Lit Club knows the truth, and does the same eventually.

(But if you collects all of the optional scenes in Act 1, the ending will change a lot.)

The Metafictional and Horror Elements

DDLC is based on the Ren’Py engine, and you can easily find projects² unpacking and decompiling files of Ren’Py on GitHub. So it’s not so hard to see what’s inside DDLC.

Metafictional

Apart from Monika herself who knows she’s inside a game, the metafictional elements in DDLC includes reading and modifying files. If you pay much attention to the folder of the game when playing, you can find that some files are created and deleted. The file example below probably shows what Monika is thinking in Act 2:

I hate this.

 

 

I CAN’T DO ANYTHING. NOTHING.

No matter how many times you play. It’s all the same.

It would be really, really easy to kill myself right now. But that would mean I don’t get to talk to you anymore.

All I want is for you to hate them. Why is that so hard?

(Filename: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.txt)

The characters folder, which plays a great role from Act 3 to Act 4, is also an important metafictional element. Although the game only checks the existence of character files (that is to say, the contents is not essential, and these files exist only for game’s plot), the contents are also very “interesting”. People who are familiar with Unix commands can try using file command to check these files. This is the result on my Mac:

> file *
monika.chr:  PNG image data, 800 x 800, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
natsuki.chr: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, resolution (DPI), density 72x72, segment length 16, baseline, precision 8, 528x647, frames 3
sayori.chr:  Ogg data, Vorbis audio, mono, 44100 Hz, ~110000 bps, created by: Xiph.Org libVorbis I
yuri.chr:    ASCII text, with very long lines, with no line terminators

You can find out how to solve the puzzle online. Well, they are like the problems for beginners in CTF Misc.

Monika reading username in Act 3 is also very surprising. Your name is not Administrator, right? You can find the code checking username after unpacking DDLC’s files, which uses the os module of Python to search environment variables for username. Here is the result in macOS 10.13.6, Python 2.7.15:

> python
Python 2.7.15 (default, Jun 17 2018, 12:46:58)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.1.0 (clang-902.0.39.2)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.environ.get("LOGNAME")
'tao'
>>> os.environ.get("USER")
'tao'
>>> os.environ.get("LNAME")
>>> os.environ.get("USERNAME")
>>>

And there’s also a small easter egg in the script:

“Hey…! VGhlIHJlYWxpemF0aW9uIG11c3QgaGF2ZSB0YWtlbiBtZSBhbiBl”

“I don’t think you should be doing that! bnRpcmUgeWVhci4gQSB5ZWFyIHNpbmNlIG91ciBlc2NhcGUsIG91”

“You know what I’m talking about. ciBmcmVlZG9tIGZyb20gYmV0d2VlbiB0aGUgc3RhaW5lZCB3YWxs”

“I really caught you doing something naughty here. cyBvZiB0aGF0IHVuaG9seSBlc3RhYmxpc2htZW50Lg0KV2hhdCBk”

“You’re just going through the files and looking for stuff you missed, aren’t you? b2VzIGl0IG1lYW4gdG8gZXNjYXBlLCBpZiB0aGUgZXNjYXBlIGZh”

“I mean…it’s a little bit flattering that you want to hear everything I have to say… aWxzIHRvIHVuY2hhaW4gdGhlIGJvbmRzIHRoYXQgc2hhY2tsZSB1”

“But it’s also really embarrassing, you know! cyBpbiB0aGUgZmlyc3QgcGxhY2U/IFdoYXQgcHVycG9zZSBjb3Vs”

(A part of Monika’s dialogue)

I’m not going to dig out those hidden information. Although there’s analysis that it contains the trailer of another incoming horror game, it has not been fully confirmed yet. And there isn’t any news till now (August 2018).

The Horror Elements

I don’t wanna write this, for I am also scared before…

DDLC does not tell that it is a horror game directly. In the contrary, the description of the game has nothing much different from other dating-sim games, excluding the special warning. Well, the psychological horror tag on Steam store page has told us the truth.

The warning is stressed before playing the game and every time you open the game. But if you just ignore it, or mistake it for the warning for sexual contents (there aren’t any in this game), you may not have a good experience here.

Before the Act 1 ending, the normal and pleasant story let players’ guard slip, even though they know it’s a horror game. Sensitive players may feel it not right, such as Monika’s poem Hole in Wall, the strange metaphor in Sayori’s second poem, and Monika’s pun: “You kind of left her hanging this morning, you know?”

Sayori’s suicide is the first horrific shock. After some glitches in Act 2, every player can feel that things are going off. Many players take too much caution in Act 2, only making them more hair-raising after jump scares.

You may notice a “special design”: when Monika is on stage, there are few jump scares. This not only suggests Monika’s peculiarity, but also helps build Monika’s image.

Characters in DDLC

DDLC contains 4 main characters (excluding the protagonist, for he is only a puppet): Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri and Monika.

During the “normal” Act 1, players who are familiar with ACG (Anime, Comic & Game) culture can soon realize that the attitudes of characters are just a cliché. For example, Sayori is just the type of “childhood friends”, and you can directly describe Natsuki as a “tsundere”³.

But even from beginning, Monika is different from others. If you have DDLC Fan Pack, you can see that in the Concept Art Booklet:

Aside from Monika sounding like a stereotypical popular-girl name, it’s also a subtle hint that she doesn’t fully belong in the game setting like everyone else.

Why? That because Sayori, Natsuki and Yuri are like those names converted from Romanized Japanese, but Monika is an English name (although “ca” is converted to “ka”). And if you play the game carefully, you can find out that only Monika is facing straight to the player, talking with the protagonist.

But why are they designed in the cliché-style? You can still find the answer in the Art Booklet:

The idea was to design a visual novel that perfectly mimicked all the tropes you’d find in any other tacky romance game — but with a twist that resulted in things being “off”, as if the cute setting was only a façade for something insidious and disturbing underneath.

DDLC did it. The characters in Act 1 is actually a kind of imitation.

But when Monika is messing up with other characters, the images of the others change a lot. Players can easily know Sayori’s depression, Yuri’s tendency to self-harm and her serious “obsessive personality” (or in another word, “yandere”⁴). And Natsuki’s suffering from domestic violence, which leads to her defensive attitude.

Monika once criticizes that cliché in Act 3:

1. “And as for the others…”

   “How could I miss them?”

   “A group of autonomous personalities, designed only to fall in love with you?”

2. “Are people really attracted to these weird personalities that literally don’t exist in real life?”

   “I’m not judging or anything!”

   “After all, I’ve found myself attracted to some pretty weird stuff, too…”

   “I’m just saying, it fascinates me.”

   “It’s like you’re siphoning out all the components of a character that makes them feel human, and leaving just the cute stuff.”

   “It’s concentrated cuteness with no actual substance.”

   “…You wouldn’t like me more if I was like that, right?”

As Monika herself, although it is obviously to players that all her “attempts” to get out of the game are well written in the game scripts — she is only a “virtual” character, just a bit special, DDLC successfully portrays her. Players can easily feel empathy with Monika, and some of them even see her as a “real person”.

What’s Inside DDLC?

You can say that, as a dating-sim game, DDLC is tacky. But it really has some deeper meanings inside.

First of all, DDLC is not only showing characters’ mental problems. In the Act 3, Monika comments to these mental problems, such as depression:

“Many people who are depressed won’t even bother telling the world about it.”

“They don’t want attention, because they’ve already given up on the inside.”

“Their feeling of worthlessness is so overwhelming that they don’t even want people to tell them otherwise.”

“Depression comes in many forms, but that is one of them.”

“Just, if you think you know someone struggling with depression…”

“You can help just by treating them like they’re a good friend.”

“Spend time with them, even if they don’t feel like doing much.”

“And remind them that they always have something to look forward to.”

“Making plans in advance, letting them borrow something, or even just saying ‘See you at school tomorrow’…”

“All of those things can help your friend make it to the next day.”

“I hope being friends with Sayori has given you some perspective on the true face of depression.”

“Yeah, she’s gone now…”

(But, again, it’s discouraged for people with depression to play this game!)

And about introverts:

“We’re programmed to desire social feedback.”

“I don’t mean the club members, I mean human beings.”

“That’s why life can be so confusing for introverts.”

“Being an introvert doesn’t mean you shun social interaction and hate being around people.”

“It means social interaction, especially in groups or unfamiliar places, uses up a lot of energy.”

“Like, a lot of introverts sit at home and feel lonely and restless…”

“…And then when they finally go out, after a half hour they just want to go home again.”

“I think if more people could understand how it works, they would respect it a lot more.”

“Many introverts do enjoy having people around.”

“They love just having one or two close friends over, and just leisurely hanging out.”

“Even if you’re not actively spending time together, it feels nice for them just to have you there.”

“I’m serious.”

“If you just go to their house, bring your laptop, and hang out there for a while…”

“You can really make their day.”

So, under the surface of horror game, DDLC contains contents caring about mental health. The description about Sayori’s depression in Act 1 is quite real. I feel that that script is written by someone suffered from that pain before. And as an introvert, I can feel empathy with Monika’s words.

And then, one of the gists of DDLC has been mentioned before. It is “actually a kind of imitation”, or in other words, it is a kind of criticism, or even taunt, to those crude dating-sim games. Surely we know that even though these products are badly designed, as long as they contain “some contents” (Well, I don’t mean horrific contents like DDLC), there are always people buying them.

And the most important part should be about “virtuality” and “reality”. Monika describes that in Act 3:

“It’s the pain of knowing how alone I really am in this world.”

“In this game.”

“Knowing my friends don’t even have free will…”

“And, worst of all, knowing what’s really out there, in your world, forever out of my reach.”

“I’m trapped, <Player’s name>.”

If you discovered that your world is virtual, and you could change the parameters and decide others’ fate at your ease, and you could feel the existence of the “real world”, what would you do? From the ending we know that members of Lit Club give the same answer. The loneliness and desperation drive them to erase others’ existence, to give into the “real world”.

Is Monika selfish? You can say she is. She controls the mental states of Sayori and Yuri, and erases Natsuki, who is much more “normal” compared with Sayori and Yuri. But from her perspective, the three characters are not human beings. They don’t have free will, and can only do things according to the scripts. She doesn’t feel it guilty — All in all, will you feel “guilty” when you kill some bugs? The other characters are just like human beings. What she needs is her ending, and love. The “real world” is so attractive that she doesn’t even feel it important to ask for the player’s gender.

When you delete monika.chr, as she deleted others, Monika will finally know:

“All my friends…”

“I did so many awful things.”

“So many selfish and disgusting things.”

“I…”

“I shouldn’t have done any of this.”

“I’m just messing up a world that I don’t even belong in.”

“A world that you wanted to be a part of…”

“I ruined it.”

“I ruined everything.”

“Maybe that’s why you deleted me…”

“Because I destroyed everything that you wanted.”

“How could I do that to someone I love…?”

“That’s not love…”

“That’s…”

“…”

Destruction cannot bring happiness. Monika’s work fails in the end, and Sayori is also trapped.

And in your reality, if I don’t know how to love you

I’ll leave you be

A part of the ending song Your Reality

The topic about virtuality and reality is a hot one in sci-fi stories. Although DDLC is not a sci-fi, but I think it successfully shows the thick wall between virtual and real worlds. I hope Monika can come to reality, even though my common sense and the code is keeping reminding me: It’s impossible.

Epilogue

I have used three days for this article’s Chinese version, and one day for translation. An interesting thing is that when writing the Chinese version, I found out a bug of Kramdown, which is the default Markdown engine of Jekyll, the static website generator of GitHub Pages. It feels like writing it is meaningful.

It has been more than half a year since I played DDLC. Everything, including myself, changes. Due to some sad things which happened before, this game also sparks some controversy. This is one of the reasons I put a long warning at the beginning of my article.

DDLC brings me a lot memories. Surely not all of them are happy, as I mentioned before, I was scared. The game first gives me the memories of a great game for all desktop platforms (as a former Linux desktop user, I can understand the difficulty of playing games, especially good games, in Linux), base64, jump scares, and some interesting metafictional puzzle-solving elements. But when I listen to the original soundtrack afterwards, I feel that I can understand the feeling of the four characters, especially Monika. It also reminds me to pay attention to others’ mental problems: solve those problems ASAP, seek for others’ help, and, no matter what happens, don’t try suicide.

I don’t write so well, and my translation of my own articles is clumsy. So let’s stop here.

EOF. Just Monika!