Doki Doki Literature Club (or DDLC), a title first available on itch.io and later brought over to Steam, became something of an unlikely smash hit thanks to its nontraditional storytelling and gameplay elements. The upcoming console release of the game now has some fans concerned about what will be lost when it's ported onto new platforms.
[Warning - spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club below]
Doki Doki Literature Club found an unsettling way to deconstruct the dating sim genre of gaming when it was released in 2017, introducing players to a horror-adjacent visual novel that hid a frightening amount of depth underneath a brightly-colored wrapper. DDLC treated its characters with nods to what they are - video game NPCs - and explored what that meant in terms of their relationship to the player behind the screen. As the game progressed, its storyline became increasingly disturbing.
This surprising twist on a standard formula is debatably the most notable element of DDLC, leading to its success with so many players and streamers. Its positive reception paved the way for more DDLC content almost 3 years after release, and more recently earned it a console port. The console edition, titled Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, will be coming to PlayStation and Xbox consoles as well as the Nintendo Switch later in June. However, it's also raised some concerns among players who are familiar with the game's structure. Most notably, many are wondering how the console port plans to handle DDLC's unusual ending.
Doki Doki Literature Club's unique final puzzle in the original game's ending, which required players to actually go into the system folder and make changes there, was a standout moment. This out-of-the-game element is arguably what made DDLC so well-known, and it was an effective way to build up from the game's many fourth wall breaks. However, it's uncertain how this ending will work when the game releases on consoles later this month. Without an easy way to access the game's files, it would be more or less impossible for console players to solve the final puzzle if it weren't fundamentally altered. Many fans have already begun speculating about how the game's creators intend to handle this and in what ways the console release will differ from the original.
Another popular indie game, Undertale, was released just a couple years earlier than DDLC and included similar out-of-the-game elements, particularly towards the ending of the game. These were tweaked when Undertale came out on consoles later on down the line. For example, in the original release, the game would crash before players reached one of the final battles. On console releases, they would instead just encounter a white screen for a few seconds. Undertale's unusual mechanics weren't as centerpiece as the ending of Doki Doki Literature Club, however, so finding a solution may not be quite as straightforward. The game could perhaps allow players to access a new level or menu designed to appear visually similar to the system folder, allowing players to make the required changes there. While this might not be a seamless fix, it would at least maintain the basic idea of what made the PC version of Doki Doki Literature Club's ending so unique.
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June 15, 2021 at 11:58PM
