Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is a psychological horror game disguised as a dating sim by Team Salvato. The original game is playable on PC Platforms. The game is deceptive because it appears to be your classic anime dating stimulator game where the player joins a literature club and writes poems to improve one of the four girls, but as the player continues the story, it becomes darker than it appears and discusses topics on mental illness and control. To play DDLC as a feminist means recognizing that the game critiques the male-centered fantasy of dating sims, but then asking whether the game undercuts its own message by turning the girls’ sufferings into the main source of horror.
In a normal dating sim, the player expects to choose a girl, say and do the right thing, and be rewarded with the girl’s love. However, DDLC uses these expectations against the player, which is what makes the game’s design choice feel different. It makes the player feel complicit. The poem-writing mechanic seems innocent, but it also reduces each girl into a pattern that the player can optimize. For example, Yuri likes darker and more complex words, and if the player is able to identify this, they can maximize their chances of getting rewarded by Yuri. From an MDA perspective, the mechanic is word selection, the dynamic is romantic optimization, and the aesthetic, which is not quite “aesthetic,” is control. This sense of control feels uncomfortable because as the player plays the game, they realize that the girls are characters whose pain has been turned into a game.
In Chess’s argument Play Like a Feminist, Chess writes that video games can be “affective systems,” meaning they make players feel things and use those feelings to help us feel things like identity and power. This game does this effectively because it’s comfort and cuteness disguised as power imbalance and the game later weaponizes this comfort. The interface seems safe, but then a character will glitch or there are minor changes in facial expressions. Horror is hidden underneath an interface that initially seems harmless.
As a feminist game, DDLC is successful when it critiques agency, a game and feminist concept that Chess discusses in the book. Agency is defined as the player’s ability to act, and within the feminist movement, agency is the capacity of women and marginalized genders to make independent choices, challenge patriarchal structures, and assert control over their own lives. The player can make choices that affirm what the girls like, but those choices don’t protect the girls or meaningfully change the system they’re trapped in. This exposes the game between simulated agency and actual agency. DDLC gives the player the appearance of control through dialogue options, but the game eventually later reveals that these choices operate inside a system already shaped by Monika’s control and the conventions of the dating sim genre. In this way, the game becomes feminist not because it gives the player complete freedom, but because the lack of freedom is uncomfortable and visible– the reality for many women.
I’ve played a few dating sims and DDLC stands out because while the player’s choice feels personal like any other dating sim, it refuses to let the player treat emotional intimacy as a simple reward system. For example, in Mystic Messenger, the player builds intimacy through a phone-like interface where they join timed chatrooms, choose dialogue responses, and collect affection points that lead toward a character route. Even though the game also creates pressure through real-time participation, it mostly preserves the fantasy that if the player says the right things and shows up enough, intimacy can be rewarded and maintained. However, in DDLC, that fantasy breaks down because while the player makes dialogue choices in a similar vein, the game uses the girls’ breakdowns to show how limiting and artificial the dating sim structure is. Instead of rewarding the player for choosing correctly, DDLC makes the player confront the fact that these girls are trapped inside a system built around the player’s desire.
My critique is that the girls often feel like evidence in an argument about manipulation rather than full participants of that argument. They’re not given enough agency or perspective to meaningfully shape the game’s point about control themselves. This is where DDLC fails to fully apply feminist agency theory. I think the point would’ve been stronger if the girls’ had more voice outside of their usefulness to Monika’s breakdown and the player’s fear. I wish the girls’ personalities and relationships could exist beyond their trauma. I also think that the game could be more careful with how it uses mental illness and self-harm as horror. While the shock is effective, it sometimes makes these very real issues feel like plot twists rather than experiences that deverse more care and context. I think this could be improved through, say, a final reflection. It could’ve briefly returned to the girls’ perspectives, and give them space to be remembered as more than routes or victims in Monika’s story. This would make the feminist agency theory more visible because it prioritizes their voice and story.
Ultimately, playing DDLC as a feminist means recognizing how effectively it exposes the male-centered fantasy of dating sims, but still holding it accountable for making girls’ suffering carry so much of that critique.
