Do you like visual novels? No? It’s the same! Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! It is much more than that, it is an experience that anyone interested in the narrative of our environment should have. So… join the literature club!

How long has this game been on my Steam to-do list, my gosh… And there it was still unplayed. And that was free. Maybe it was because I was imagining something else. Yes, I knew there was “something” going on with this game, but for the times that we find ourselves, I imagined it would be the classic subversive plot, in which all that layer of “cuteness” and pastel tones hid something much darker.

What a big mistake that I have finally fixed with this Plus edition! of the game. Doki Doki Literature Club was and is much more than that. Its twists are far more important than a simple subversion of expectations; its significance in the environment, much more crucial. So, from here, if you have not played it, I can only encourage you not to take much longer to do so. Don’t be fooled by its visual novel cloak, because even though it belongs to this genre, it uses it for its own purposes. The downside of doing an analysis of this game is that the best of it cannot be counted.Run away, if you have the slightest interest, from any image, video and information search engine that is on the net and go blindly for it. For my part, I cannot even explain why I think it is such an important work without falling apart, so I imagine that the reader here must make a leap of faith and look beyond the first impression that the play.

This is how Doki Doki begins: you are the classic Japanese high school boy who is convinced by Sayori, the classic childhood friend, to visit one of the classic school clubs: the literature club. There you will meet three other girls, not devoid of many of the clichés and clichés that we can find in these games: Natsuki, a direct and arrogant young woman; Yuri, very shy, fond of symbolic literature; and Monika, the perfect girl and president of the Club. All this little-worked dating sim layer can throw back the most skeptical and, again, the only thing I can do is implore you to take a leap of faith to move forward, to understand the true concept behind Doki Doki Literature Club.

Join the club!

Through his characters, Salvato reveals the difficulty and complications of the creative processEven in its early stages, however, it is noticeable that Team Salvato and more specifically Dan Salvato, its designer, has some concerns that he demonstrates through the work. It is no coincidence that the selected club is the literature club. Through his characters, Salvato reveals the difficulty and complications of the creative process,the fear of externalizing something to which you have dedicated a lot of effort to others. Not only are you realizing that the script uses various literary techniques to copy the visual novel style and then manipulate it at will, but that anyone who has faced writing something, anything, is easy to come into communion with it. author: the literary advice he offers, the author’s insecurities, the importance of planning …

An extra layer that entertains while you are pursuing what seems, in the first instance, the objective of the protagonist: to flirt. At the end of the day, Doki Doki is camouflaged between the curtains of romantic topics and, therefore, we will have to make the story tend to be intimate with one of the girls from the club. To do this, we will write a series of poems that are more suited to the tastes and styles of each of the young women. Have I already lost your attention? Well, I repeat: Doki Doki is not about that. If you want to know what it is about, you will not find it here. You must play it.

Doing so is also very easy. As I mentioned before, the original version was completely free, while Team Salvato has now launched this Plus! which adds a series of extra content, while offering an official translation into our language. A translation of a large bill perpetrated, among others, by Ramón Méndez,since he is a friend of the house, I have been able to ask him some questions. And it is that the translation of Doki Doki offers a tone that perfectly matches the characters and the changing tone of the work: “Part of the grace of the game, already in English, is that it has that touch of basic language and adorable and simple plots to the delight of all users so that later the impact of what is there in the background will be greater ”, Ramón tells me. “Already in English it is the basic language and in Spanish we respect the tone and, on occasions, we bring it closer to the nearby language to make it more believable that they are girls of their age and not fall into speaking flat or artificially. CONSIDER that there is a very subtle thing, that I do not know if it will be noticed from the outside, but that we have killed ourselves a little to do it. The language evolves with the game.

What Ramón says at the end that “the language evolves with the game” is another of those parts that, by spoiler, I cannot clarify, but which are extremely important and make the careful translation appreciated. In addition to localization, the Plus! It includes a series of six secondary stories to the main plot, which we are unlocking according to our decisions with the poems; the 13 melodies that make up the soundtrack of the game whose main theme I can’t get out of my head right now; as well as high definition pictures and portraits. There are other changes included in this edition, but I have ultimately decided not to talk about them. I think it’s best if you discover them for yourself when you finish the game.

Once you enter their game you will be hopelessly hookedIt makes me very angry that I can’t comment more in depth on what makes Doki Doki such a special game. When I analyzed Nier Replicant , I told you a bit about Yoko Taro’s philosophy. In one of his talks, he spoke of the border between what can be achieved in our environment and what cannot. In that border, there is a blurred line: an unexplored terrain where some authors seek new formulas to tell stories through the unique capabilities of the video game. And it is in that fuzzy line where this Doki Doki Literature Club is located.

I sincerely believe that anyone who observes video games from a not only playful, but also experimental prism; If you are looking for new proposals that surprise you and make you reflect on the faculties of the medium, you will find in Doki Doki Literature Club a unique game that will remain in your memory for a long time. It is true that, formally, it has many objectionable aspects, because it recycles many elements. But, once you get into their game, it is also likely that all of this does not matter to you. You will already be hopelessly hooked.