In Doki Doki Literature Club!, players transform into what seems like a typical high-school literature club member that writes poems and builds friendships against a backdrop of pastel-pink menus and chibi avatars. Yet beneath its saccharine veneer lies a sophisticated meta-narrative engine that mimics psychological thriller conventions of glitching files, rewriting character models, and breaking the fourth wall that comes to unsettle the player’s expectations and interrogate player agency. Doki Doki Literature Club! is created by Team Salvato (Dan Salvato) and is available on PC (Steam, itch.io) and browser platforms. The game’s target audience are scholars and students of game studies and feminist theory, feminist gamers, and designers interested in equity in digital narratives, because Doki Doki Literature Club! leverages narrative dissonance, glitch aesthetics, and emotional-labor mechanics to challenge traditional portrayals of consent, mental health, and authority in interactive storytelling which makes it an ideal case study for critical analysis, ethical design, and the politics of play.
