For my Critical Play, I played Doki Doki Literature Club by Dan Salvato. The target audience is adults (18+) who enjoy psychological horror and/or dating sims. I think people who are fans of either genre are the target audience, since fans of anime dating sims will likely learn from the critiques the game makes about that genre. The game can be played on PC, Mac, Linux, and various modern consoles. I played it on my iPhone.
The game has two main components. One is the anime girl dating sim that appears to objectify and fetishize the high school girls you are romancing. The other is a dark horror story with psychological elements that subvert your expectations as a player. The unexpected interplay between these two components is what creates a satirical and critical tone.
When you start the game, it’s very clear that you are playing through the male gaze. As we discussed in class, the character that you are forced to play can tell you a lot about a game. In this game, you are not only forced to play a high school boy, but you also don’t have a ton of control over what you do or say. You can control who you romance which drastically changes the story, but your character still says some very questionable things throughout the game. For example, in the image below your character’s inner dialogue reveals the uncomfortable harem trope that is being portrayed by this game. There are four love interests that are all desperately fighting over you and you “just can’t seem to pick one!”
I will say, I felt that the dating sim aspects of the game took too long to get through. I think these were the moments that I felt the most annoyed as a feminist. I felt that I already didn’t have the choice of who I wanted to play as and whether they were an asshole or not, and I felt like I was actively participating in problematic behavior since I was playing from that perspective. I could have tolerated it for about an hour, but beyond that it just felt frustrating and not very satirical or critical. I feel that the game could have benefited from cutting out some of the repetitive scenes since it took me a few hours to get to the psychological thriller aspects of the game. Cutting this down would help to highlight the message the game is trying to get across. I will say, the first few times that the game deviates from your expectations are done really effectively, so perhaps the pacing is acceptable.
The first time I noticed something was off was when I logged into the game a second time and was met with a website and files that I could access, which you can see below. This gives the player hints that there is something more going on than what first meets the eye and helps you realize that you may have more control in this game than you first realized. When I entered the Files section and looked at the characters, I realized that you can delete characters. I think this leans even more into the critique of dating sim games, since it really demonstrates just how little agency the women characters have. This plays very strongly into objectification theory, and highlights the fact that the objectification of the women in this game strips them of their agency.
The second time was when Monika very deliberately breaks the fourth wall and explains that you should save your game right before anything terrible happens. You can see this interaction below. I think this is a really clever way to use a fourth wall break since it move the story along narratively (giving an indication that Monika might have more sinister intentions and control than you first thought) while also pointing out a key mechanic in such a way that players will very likely go and learn to use it. I also like the fact that the mechanics of the game can be explicitly used to promote a certain narrative. The fact that you can alter timelines and go back and redo things definitely says something about your power in the story which is interesting.
One major critique I have of this game is that as far as I can tell from looking at forums online, the “happy ending” to the game is acquired by romancing all of the girls by taking advantage of the game’s save system. This feels pretty problematic to me given that the game seems like it’s critiquing the harem trope that often appears in dating sims. The fact that the “solution” to this game is to lean even more into that trope feels counterintuitive. However, given that I haven’t played through to this point in the game, I can’t fairly critique this to the extent that I would like to. My gut instinct is that the game would benefit from a different approach for the happy ending, one that more bluntly confronts the problematic tropes and lack of agency that the women have in the game.
Another critique I have is that this game definitely relies on popular feminism. Despite the fact that it is critiquing a genre of dating sims, it still leans into and benefits from the marketing, popularity, and audience of those dating sims. Essentially, the message of the game has been successful because it is made palatable to the mainstream audience. Some may see this as a powerful subversion and reclamation of the genre, but I feel that the core critiques did not come across strongly enough for it to be only a positive thing. I think a more feminist game would ask you to interrogate why a player might feel comfortable objectifying the girls in the first place and force them to confront why they felt that the game was palatable in the first place.
