Doki Doki Literature Club

Official site

I’ll keep spoilers somewhat restricted in case someone wants to play it (it’s a bit under three hours for a fast reader, and free so hey).

Doki Doki Literature Club is a combination of a satire and a deconstruction of the (erotic) visual novel, a somewhat obscure genre that originated in Japan. Though I’ve not played such games before, I’m familiar enough with the tropes through cultural internet osmosis to appreciate a lot of what goes on here. For those unaware: most visual novels center on a young male protagonist, usually in a high school situation, often as a transfer student to excuse a ton of exposition. A dazzling bevy of diverse doe-eyed dames is then introduced via various ways, and then through tons and tons of dialogue with the occasional choice, the player selects who to pursue amorously. Lots of classic anime awkwardness usually, with interesting onomatopoeia and static art. Some get more erorically explicit than others. That’s really all the background required to appreciate Doki Doki Literature Club.

Although DDLC begins by following all the somewhat tired cliches of the genre, it also makes no secret of the fact that it’s going to get dark. There’s a big honking warning right as you launch the game that it’s going to feature stuff inapproprate for minors or those ‘easily disturbed.’

My opinion of the game varied strongly as I played through it. The opening is rather dull and occasionally extremely awkward. I felt like the girl characters were written in a rather obvious and transparently manipulative way. This was however directly addressed later in the game, and that’s I believe where its strongest moments lie: the way it lays bare the way in which the characters in these games have basically no way to escape the player’s interests; interest and pursuit is mostly guaranteed to pay off. Still, there’s a fine line to tread between aping offensive content to puncture and satirise it, and uncritically replicating it. I’d say DDL does the former, but there’s definitely room to disagree.

On the other hand, the ‘dark’ material and subplot left me mostly unaffected. Having bad things happen in a story is only really interesting if it serves a narrative purpose and in DDLC it felt more played for shock value and for contrast with the usual saccharine nature of such games.

Finally, the game does some rather cool meta-level stuff which I won’t spoil here, but is definitely worth experiencing.

SpyParty

Article about the game’s development

A game jam project turned full-on indie game, this is an asymmetrical two-player head-to-head game about deception and attentiveness. It is still in early access (estimated to take another couple of years by the creator) but is now far enough along that it’s moved from a closed beta to open

One player plays as the spy, attending a fancy upper-class gathering full of film stars, ambassadors, generals and the like. The spy chooses which character to play (or chooses randomly), and has a list of missions to fulfil within a rather strict time limit. Such missions might include planting a bug on the ambassador, transferring a microfilm, or contacting a double agent.

The other player is a sniper who for whatever reason only brought one bullet, and whose job it is to shoot the spy before they complete their missions. They don’t know which character the spy is, so they need to derive it from behavioural clues. Besides shooting, the only thing they can do is change their perspective, zoom in and out, and mark specific characters as more or less likely to be the opponent.

What ensues is a wonderful game of cat and mouse and alternating brilliant bluffs and blunders. It’s especially fun to play with your opponent on voice chat, to taunt, misdirect and cheer them on. It also cannot be overstressed how pleasant the player community is - a byproduct of, until the recent steam release, being a rather small and insular set of players that the game’s designer has done a lot to try and keep civil.

I love this game’s premise, design, and execution. Little touches like making it so that it’s always obvious to the spy where the sniper’s attention is focused, because of course they have a visible laser beam on their rifle, or the how bugging the ambassador is much easier as some characters giving rise to the potential for a metagame to develop are fascinating to me. The game’s relatively simple premise and set of interactions give rise to amazing depth of play. I strongly recommend watching some streams of this game being played if the idea catches your fancy. Seeing the next-level thoughts of high-level players being discussed as they play is incredibly interesting to me at least.