Doki Doki Literature Club (Zero Punctuation)

This is actually the most accurate review I've seen yet. Nice going man

It's just occurred to me that 'Floccinaucinihilipilification Club' might be the biggest missed opportunity in all the years of Yahtz's time-honoured 'gradually corrupt the title' joke.

EDIT: He may very well be the only person on the planet I could be surprised didn't use that word in a joke.

I've been using the phrase "Okay, a little background?" for a long time, and I just now got Yahtzee's joke about it.

this is how i felt about the movie Hereditary

The premise sounds really cool but they wrapped it up in an anime dating sim. What if my wife sees that? Or god forbid friends or family that don't know what the game really is. Shit would have me labeled a creep, adults shouldnt be playing dating games starring children and no one is gonna know what it's really about

Judging by this review I actually got the best possible experience by wussing out after Sayori killed herself. That scene got me super hard and it seems the rest of the game wouldn't have anyway.

I mean, I kind of skimmed through this video and I know this video was made 4 years ago, but judging from what I've seen, you really didn't give the game enough praise or credit or talk about other important things about the game that made it stand out, I can kind of see why the jump scares wouldn't really scare you but like, that's most likely because you have a lot of experience when it comes to horror, but for me who barely has any, this game was so creepy and unsettling, and still scares me to this day.

I liked it more than Yahtzee probably because I've only played one other VN and aren't used to all the tropes. I wanted to fucking cry when the suicide happened. Hey, just so you're aware, if you have severe depression and two other mental health issues you're on a fuck ton of medication for, actually pay attention to the warning and don't fucking play it. I went balls deep because I felt like I was missing out on a unique experience. And I was. At the time, after I got my revenge by making sure the antagonist forever experiences the hell of being repeatedly overwritten on an SSD, the game was a particular sore spot. A year-ish later, I can say I'm glad I did it. At the time, I dunno honestly. It was good and awful. But at least for correct reasons. I mean, it's a game that invokes an emotion other than fear of missing out so you reach for your fucking wallet. And there's talent on display, VAs, art, and writing. I mean, the creator managed to make millions of people feel bad for a fucking 2D image that doesn't exist. It humanized a cloud of ones and zeros.

Plus you can tell the game was made with actual passion, so it's flaws aren't as bad in my eyes as it was made by a person who had a vision and will to bring it about and like any human, made something that had some mistakes. It wasn't a flaw of being morally reprehensible by preying on the instincts of the more vulnerable people of society to aid a couple complete pieces of shit in human form add some more fucking zeros onto their bank account.

Two years after watching this review, and downloading the game, I finally saw Sayori swinging at the end of the rope at 4.29am this morning. And Yahtzee, you are DEAD FUCKING WRONG!!! It wasn't sad. It was the highpoint of the game.

It marked the point where I no longer had to be talked at, and get told how I feel and what I think. It was the point where EVERY delusion the devs have about depression, suicide, teenage romance, and the appropriate age at which to fuck a chick.

This game was one of the most boring fucking things I wave ever encountered.

Glad you gave it away cos I like the name but not enough to actually play it. Plus on PS4 it costs actual money! Luckily I didn't buy it before I found it free on various PC places.

"Get bigger hands!"

Why can't you just stop being so right about everything this is so fucking annoying please miss ONCE.

ngl I really like the fact Sayori's death wasn't horrific, just sad, it wasn't some "ooo spooky suicide mental illness!" trope. it was more realistic and blunt about how it feels to be suicidal or be affected by a loved one's suicide. the game and Sayori especially hold a special place in my heart because of that, made me feel less alone, because while you can have people tell you over and over that things aren't so bad and it'll get better, but ddlc had an understanding that actually comforted me a bit and made me want to get better.

Lol he seems experienced

Is there anyone in the escapist who would be willing to put the various gags from the normal ZP episode credits into the descriptions of these uploads where the credits are completely absent?

You know, Yahtzee was really right about them not wanting to drop the visual novel act for a while. Once a friend tried to show me one of the creepy parts of DDLC but it quickly turned into me awkwardly waiting for him to skip through all the standard dating sim stuff. XD

Frankly I don't know what he was thinking. There's a metric fuck ton of it, and the creepy part only works when contrasted against the regular anime stuff so the effect was lost on me.

This review is spot on and addresses basically all my feelings about this game, thank you

Undertale and Doki Doki Literature Club share another thing in common, they are excessively easy to spoil. Each game has an emotional hook baited around 3/4 key reveals that are so important to the story that learning them in advance really damages the game. These spoilers are also something you can spoil with literally a sentence.

The difference is that in Undertale, the overall game is still well written and designed, so even if you lose those important moments, there's still enough there to make you care. As a general liker of visual novels, the first couple hours of Doki Doki just plain suck, it has a few good beats that are interesting, which you touched on, but it's all in one big puddle of boring, the game's central hook doesn't add to the enjoyment, it's the only fully enjoyable aspect. It's a shame to, because I actually really like the game for it's better concepts (and just plain love the ending song)

"It wasn't creepy in a psychological horror sense, it was just fucking sad." That feels like praise.

Since this finally came to consoles I own it on Switch and PS4. It's now my favorite game and it got me into visual novels. I love it.

Intrigued on your thoughts of plus lol

It'd be interesting to see a version of the story where Monika doesn't mess with the files. Keep the semi-metanarrative, with a character's death fucking up the game enough that there's glitches, which is why things reset after Sayori died, but Monika didn't do anything to the fourth wall. Sure, she knows about it, but all she did to Sayori was talk her into the breakpoint.

Then she does it to the rest of the girls, step by step, until the club loses too many members to stay afloat and the story becomes an after-school friend group, and with numbers going down past that till it's just you and Monika, as even several side characters who were introduced to round out the cast as a patch effort by the system are swept into unimportance by Monika, and you're alone with her. No other students, just the by now totally empty protagonist, Monika, and the player.

The school still exists, but the game's systems have run out of solutions to salvage the mechanics, so it's just a lifeless background with nobody else acting to populate it. Background characters visible in images but never interacted with in any meaningful capacity. And you're given the chance to talk to Monika, alone. Instead of beating her by deleting files, you just talk to her for long enough and she starts working things out in her head. She realizes what she's done, and why she did it. And she realizes it wasn't worth it.

From there the game could go any number of directions depending on finale tone preferences, but I thought the overall concept was neat enough to write out here.

I wonder if Yahtzee has a new appreciation for the game after MatPat did his videos on the hidden lore.

This is why I like Yahtzee, I need someone to give me cliff notes on the meme games.

I don't know, I like war shooters. I liked Medal of Honour and Call of Duty before they became the fps incarnation of EA sports games. And my problem with the current crop is that they're all the same and I've already played Modern Warfare. But what destroys Spec Ops for me is a combination of over-the-shoulder-camera and not-working-cover-system. It took me a while to play it, what with it being the mentioned punch in the gut, but I really wanted to. And after the first fight I deinstalled it, no way am I gonna live through that for a few hours before having even more hours of that with accompanying punches in my gut.
I guess this is one of these "someone wasn't completely and comprehensively right on yt" posts :-/

"A jailbait of... girls." I did a half-spit-take from that, and I doff my cap to you sir. Also... I'm stealing that.

“Get off my lawn” is one of the subtlest jokes I think I’ve ever heard Yahtzee say.

P.M. died for this



Again.

Anybody else rewatching this after the Switch announcement?

And Now Doki Doki Is Coming To Console Finally

He's right. When it hits, the game just guns it.

This made me unnecessarily happy

When searching to re-watch this episode, I typed "zero zero punctuation club" into my search bar and let's just say...




I'm disappointed in myself.

I think DDLC kinda cheapened Sayori´s death when they introduced the Meta Elements of the narrative, and the need to adress them is one of the most persistent blights of the DDLC modding scene: With hat being said, some Mods for DDLC are line with what Yahtzee here proposed, making more emphasis on the Mental health aspects of the game rather than the Metafictional and Horror Ones- For those interested I really recommend the Blue Skies Mod. This basically turn the game into a more traditional Dating Sim, but shifting the focus of the story to the girls and their particular issues: This opens the possibility for finding a happy conclusion tot heir stories, but there is chance to mess up (and ist quite easy trust me)

I mean its not really a 'game' per se but clout for Dan Salvato the creator, thats why its free and feels more like a tech demo. Still a great game for the price.

Rather than playing doki doki literature club and letting my dead weeb heart roll my eyes at the 'parody' aspect of predictable stuff.... I let my mom play it . :) 10/10.... I recommend.

Like warning: My moms never played videogames outside of centipede and doesn't understand anime. The first couple minutes she was confused where she was (camera is the head) and why she had to be a boy etc... This was actually a great game for her because she can't understand buttons on the ps3 or even wii controls so - the point and click mouse was very easy. I helped her save the game when she needed breaks and I warned her at the start this was something sweet with some dark undertones. Her reactions were more priceless than any fun I would have got out the game and it was really nice to sit on the sofa with my mom and actually be her p2 in spirit, like... hyping her up to date the girls and make some dialog choices. We even talked in depth about the poems. She got really invested in the game.

She wont delete monica ...

First time playing this I went the Sayori route, and when she told me about her depression I got a really horrific idea of what the game would become. It didn't turn out to be true, and I understand it's not fair to judge a game for what you want it to be rather than what it's trying to be but I still find myself wishing that hunch had been correct. I thought the point of the game would be to test your resolve to continue dating someone with mental illness. I thought that maybe every girl has some serious issue that you'll only find out about if you go their route, and then once you confess they'd completely change and the rest of the game would just be about whether you stick if out with her even though you can't fix her problems or go for another girl and feel like trash. Like imagine you get together with Sayori, but after that you hardly ever see her. She doesn't kill herself, she's just too depressed to get out of bed. You don't see her at school, and the few times you actually spend time together she's just berating herself over and over again, telling herself that she's worthless. You get dialogue options to try and cheer her up but nothing works. Nothing you say can make her feel better. Meanwhile you're still spending most of your time with the other girls in the literature club, writing poems for people you don't want to impress but who are all falling in love with you regardless. They all seem so happy and normal and slowly all of their bad qualities start to disappear while the one you're going for just gets less and less fun to hang out with. And then at the end, whatever you did, nothing really changes. If you stay with her she's still depressed, and if you cheat on her she never finds out. The only person who has to live with your decisions is you. Now that's a game I'd like to play.

Imagine have a literature club with punctuation, how are you today yes im good how are you yes im doing very well bit hot isnt it

Sayori's depression was the most compelling part of the game for me by an astronomical unit. I think that it would have been more effective as a horror if it stuck with the disturbingly realistic story it was setting up, but I have to say that after what a single, very hard punch did to me emotionally, I probably would have given up playing the game if it had even begun to hint at something like that for a second time.

Doki Doki Panic has a really good that it never truly utilizes.
The idea that the stereotypes of a dating sim can be experimented with in a meta way to actually enhance drama and characterization in the genre is interesting but the game like a few others only has the one criticism of the genre and just descends from there, becoming just another dating sim or in this case, a creepy pasta.

Course there's a 10 quid DLC now...

Nope nope not today. Nope goodbye.

I want to know more about the events in Bratton Fleming

Just Monica

This game absolutely fucking sucks. SO incredibly boring. Not even worth the price of FREE

I used to love ddlc now I hate it