Thank you, OP. I thought to myself maybe I'll make a thread about this, but I didn't. I was feeling shy and afraid of negative reactions because this visual novel can only be described as overrated garbage.
It owes its popularity to four factors.
1- It's free.
2- It's on Steam.
3- English translation available from day 1.
4- Nothing controversial about it, just cheap jump scare.
That's the perfect recipe to get the most out of casuals and ``ironic weebs'' as some call them.
On a side note, I personally wish this demographic was called ``Discord teens with ahegao avatars''. It's a longer name but does a much better job of describing it.
Expect more visual novels to be released in a similar format in the coming years.

Haven't read it and I'm not really interested in it but I heard that it's a bad Higurashi.
Are the similarities really big or is it just another one of those comparisons that stupid idiots make because they found one aspect similar?

>>2131
>English translation
Wasn't it written in English?

Man, I really hate the trend of super glossy art that seems to be so popular now.

>>2134
I'm not that fond of the contemporary art style in general. Despite the focus on cuteness in most newer art styles, there's a charm to older art that the newer lacks.

>>2136
This picture is hilarious. I agree to some degree as well. I have seen several anime that look gorgeous that use the current style.

>>2131 Let's try to make "niwaka" a thing, again. As I side note, I felt a similar way toward the "Analogue" franchise, which I played hoping it'd please my love for the "2D text on a 3D plane" computer-y aesthetic (it seriously didn't, and the engine's complete ren'py dogshit to boot)
>>2137 Game's Never7, you should check it out.

>>2130
Yeah, but don't let its fame turn you against it: It's pretty damned good. Monika best girl.

It's kind of amazing how it was coded. It really shows the extent to which one can use Renpy.

>>12859
It's not similar to Higurashi at all other than a timeloop and some violent scenes.

>>12858
The length is a huge factor too. It wouldn't be nearly as popular if it was 30-40 hours.

Almost played this when I saw it pop up on steam a few times since it looked cute but never had the chance/time. I don't follow up on gaming news much but I got the impression this was kind of popular. Found out what the deal with this game actually is and honestly I find it a bit aggravating and disappointing. -of course- something like this would be popular in the west, where cute is a four letter word and people hate VNs that aren't filled with blood violence or drama. So -of course- there has to be a catch for a game like this to be popular.

So I was watching some crappy game vids this morning when I saw reviews for this game start popping up, and almost all of them were from game reviewers who never touch anything anime style. Needless to say, this game has become huge with normalfags and the type who normally would hate these style of games.
This started raising some questions, and I soon found myself in a very lengthy discussion with a couple other people about this. The discussion was mainly about how the game felt like an attack on a genera of games that had never really been popular in the west until very recently. Generally speaking, in the history of gaming most of the games that get imported from japan are horror/action tittles. because there's not much of a market for the moe stuff, The style of games Doki doki literature club is mimicking have simply never been available in the west before steam came along and made it easier for these games to be published and fine an audience. Before steam, VNs rarely got translated, and mangagamber had an uphill battle trying to get them to catch on in the west. At this time, the only games that managed to get popular for the most part were violent horror games like Higurashi or saya no uta. Mangagamer meanwhile had little success pushing more moe games such as Shuffle or galaxy angle.

Skip ahead a few years and steam has gone from being primary big name western games, to weeb central. We start to see VNs get translated at a decent rate now, and we even see a violence/horror free VN manage to gain a lot of popularity by the name of nekopara. One could say this was looking like a renaissance for the west. A time when moe, dating games, and general cuteness might finally find a place here.
We even started to see western made VNs, now that it seemed like a market for them was forming. These usually weren't very good and had pretty fugly art, but it was still interesting to see all the same. Then we got some some nasty games like those huniepop things which have the look of being from japan, but are actually western made agenda filled garbage. Those were mostly harmless though. Now we have doki doki literature club, what feels like an attack on these style of games. This time the game hides it's true intentions of being a mockery/degeneration of these style of games. This while trying to make you feel guilty about playing VNs like this. Before we looked into this, I made the wild claim this game was made by feminist or SJWs who hated anime style games and might even consider dating sims to be sexist trash that needs to be purged. Truth however wasn't that far off.
It's creator is someone who claims to have a love/hate relationship with anime. which apparently translates to them having an extremely passive interest in anime, and hating "moelove". They claim to be a fan of the love live mobile game, smash brothers, and yumi niki, as if these are badges of honor make them an otaku. To cut to the point, this game is propaganda made by people who hate anything moe and want you make you feel bad for liking it.
The sad part is, people are falling for it hook line and sinker. This game has gotten massively popular and is only becoming more so each day. It's a subtle manipulative message of hate that people are failing to notice as they spread it. This is what Peta wishes it could accomplished with it's parody games such as Pokemon Black & Blue, had they been as subtle in it's delivery as Doki doki literature club was, they might have succeeded in fooling people to eat it up. Did none of you ever stop to ask yourself why a game like this would be given out for free?

This, This is why we can't have nice things.

links;
https://kotaku.com/doki-doki-literature-clubs-horror-was-born-from-a-love-1819724999
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/117170-Zero-Punctuation-Doki-Doki-Literature-Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYoXzpa3ar4

>>13127
Calling this game propaganda is a bit heavy-handed. Some guy just wanted to make a game that deconstructs the visual novel genre in a critical fashion. He did so in an "edgy" way that might startle or shock certain types of people. The game is on the same level as Hatoful Boyfriend but with horror elements; It's a meme game. One that definitely comes across as a bit insidious due to the psychological horror elements.

I don't think it's part of a wide-reaching scheme by feminists to make people hate anime, that's actually absurd. It reminds me of the guy who claimed that Undertale was produced by "cultural Marxists" a while back.

If anything it's having the opposite effect and bringing anime to a wider audience - Which is also undesirable in it's own way.

Westerners just love horror because our culture is obsessed with death and destruction. It's why Saya no Uta, featuring sex with a Lovecraftian eldritch-thing in the guise of a young girl, managed to get as popular as it did, even getting a comic adaptation (though I think Saya was "aged up" in that iirc). I'm paraphrasing Alan Watts when I say that Americans developed a culture that doesn't praise life, but death.

Post edited on 25th Feb 2018, 8:21am

>>13127
I've been playing VNs for over 7 years, ranging from Sayan no Uta to Canvas 2. I've also enjoyed anime ranging from Eva to Ichigo Mashimaro, and manga from Aku no Hana to Usagi Drop. I think you have a false dichotomy there, as liking sophisticated unsettling works isn't exclusive from liking simple and joyful ones.

I very much enjoyed Doki Doki and not once felt it as an attack on VNs, but rather as a personal homage to them made by Salvato, at the very best of his squills and from the bottom of is heart. Even aside from the yandere and horror elements, together with its criticism of commonplace tropes, the character of Monika struck me as an impressive achievement towards hyper-reality, or simply blurring the limits between reality/object and fiction/representation. This, I think, happens when we allow ourselves to be really invested in some narrative and play along with it (with the epitome of it in commitedly having a waifu, à la /mai/, like I have for about 8 years now). Say, I even made a little piano song to Monika, as an answer to her making one for me, and post it on her Twitter; she completely ignored it (which was a little too real, kek), but the sole fact of being able to indulge into it and 'interacting' with a character in such a way was exciting and uplifting.

Do I resent that unwanted people of some sort jumped into the bandwagon of its popularity? Well yes, just like I dislike a large part of otaku fandom as well (including some horrendous Eva fans). But that doesn't turn me against the works themselves, which I think would be backwards: the finished work is what one makes of it, and if I myself find it valuable then what others do or not is inconsequential.

Of course I neither expect to change your mind about this: you like/dislike what you do and that's about it. The thing is, I personally very much liked the game in a way I felt like advocating here.

>>13139
Well put. It's nice to hear the opinion of someone who knows what he's talking about. There's too many people jumping on the bandwagon who have never touched a VN in their life while praising this as the best VN ever.

Post edited on 28th Feb 2018, 1:02pm

So is this game worth trying?

>>13324
yeah is quite fun and you can finish it in one evening

>>13129
Sorry for necrobumping. Do you have a source on Alan Watts saying that? I looked it up and couldn't find anything relevant. People seem to have contradictory opinions on how Americans perceives death. Some say we hide it too much and pretend it's not part of life.
>a comic adaptation
Which everybody who read the vn universally agrees is generic shit that misses the point.

>>13129
The difference between this and Hatoful Kareshi is that the author of Hatoful wasn't completely clueless about what they were doing and thus could make something that was good in its own right, beyond just being a joke. DDLC isn't really any different than the millions of Western Speed Racer parodies or any other attempt at deconstruction by people only just slightly more informed about whatever it is they're trying to "deconstruct" or "parody" than your average suburban mother might be.

>>13486
I don’t know why it’s always speed racer, considering gatchaman, Tetsuwan Atom and a localization of Macross aired quite a bit decades ago. I don’t think Speed Racer is even that popular in that time period! I also think those parodies are more focused about the low budget dubbing, poor animation seen in TV anime at the time and sometimes strange localization decisions.

Polite sage although I do have to say that the game itself was fine for what it is. The creator being pretentious has nothing to do with a fun little distraction although I will say that it seems odd to make a VN parody in this day and age considering most otaku play mobage more these days.

>>13487
>I don’t know why it’s always speed racer,
While that's for some reason the majority, I've seen sailor moon get parodied and made fun of a lot. Probably because it was strange and unusual at the time, and the people who make fun of that stuff never learned how to move on. I suspect there's a lot of ignorance mixed in with these people who are likely out of touch and think outdated trops from 40-50 years ago still apply. Which is why the same people who make fun of speed racer and sailor moon are likely going to claim all anime is tentical rape filled harem shit. Dragonball was far more popular and culturally relevant to the west, but you wont see people make fun of that half as much because it's been deemed socially acceptable to be a fan of that. I'd guess comedians and writers likely don't want to piss people off by taking shots at something people love, so they go for easy targets.

As for the topic, fuck DDLC.

SLAY THE PRINCESS is a low-budget western VN with extra existential dread.