Doki Doki Literature Club! video game

Doki Doki Literature Club! (DDLC) is a psychological horror visual novel video game developed by Dan Salvato and released on 22 September 2017 for PC, Linux, MacOS and later on 10 December 2025 released for Android and IOS.

Dan Salvato describes his game idea as follows:

While I was hanging out with my friend Corey on college campus, I brought up an idea that I was playing with in my head. The idea was to design a visual novel that perfectly mimicked all the tropes you’d find in any other tacky romance game – but with a twist that resulted in things being “off”, as if the cute setting was only a façade for something insidious and disturbing underneath.

The premise of the game is a seemingly innocent typical visual novel about a childhood friend called Sayori asking her childhood friend (the protagonist) to join a literature club that Sayori herself is part of within their school. Eventually convinced to join the club after being promised cupcakes made by one of the members of the club, the protagonist meets its three other members: Monika (President of the club), Yuri, and Natsuki. However, it gradually becomes twisted and corrupted as the game advances. The game features disturbing themes such as suicide, isolation, depression, abuse, and manipulation (hence the psychological horror tag).

The stylized “Doki Doki” part of the logo is based on Hot Mustard. “Literature Club!” uses Dear Joe 5 Casual.

Fun facts:
1. The four characters were originally created on KHMix 1st Edition. In Dan’s words: “If I wanted to start making this game, I had to use some placeholder art. So, I hopped online and used a free ‘anime character creator’” and “since the game was actually beginning to shape up, I really had to design these characters for real, and find myself an artist.” A friend of Dan’s by the name of Dave has helped him create the characters’ identities; later, another artist by the name of Kagefumi joined the development for a few months and has “helped further set the character designs in stone”. Ultimately, the final iteration of the characters was created by Satchely. The process is largely described in the game’s Fan Pack pdf document, except for the mention of KHMix 1st Edition.

2. Dan stated that he intended the release of Doki Doki Literature Club! to be on April 1st, 2017, but he knew it was not ready and wanted to publish a complete product. He also stated that the game was born from his love-hate relationship with anime. (source)

3. Dan, before developing DDLC, had a known background within the Smash Bros community for being the developer of a mod project called Project M, a community-made total conversion mod for Super Smash Bros Brawl.

Side note:
Research was contributed with help from the DDLC community. As of the making of this page and research, I am also trying to display my respect for the game and its developer for making this game.