So, perhaps as a sort of penance, or perhaps because it tracks with the underlying themes, Team Salvato is a frequent collaborator to various mental health awareness campaigns, sometimes raising funds through tie-in merchandise.
Apparently this was the campaign shirt design for this year, so I thought I'd put the image up. It is a worthy cause, when all is said and done.
Surprisingly wholesome, when Monica doesn't have elevated access and there's no MC. XD Kinda makes the game itself more jarring with how horrible she gets. Looking at the wiki, I like how the stuff that randomly occurred messed me up. On my second playthrough I got the effect where everything was tinted red in Act 2 for a bit, and it reallt threw me off wondering if something different was gonna happen.
After my 1st play I thought that maybe romancing the girls in a different order would result in stuff like the girl with the highest romance points dying first in Act 1. I really didn't want to see Sayuri in that state again and again... ;_;
Anyway, I think that's it for DDLC for me until we get this next game, if/when it comes out.
Surprisingly wholesome, when Monica doesn't have elevated access and there's no MC. XD Kinda makes the game itself more jarring with how horrible she gets. Looking at the wiki, I like how the stuff that randomly occurred messed me up. On my second playthrough I got the effect where everything was tinted red in Act 2 for a bit, and it reallt threw me off wondering if something different was gonna happen.
After my 1st play I thought that maybe romancing the girls in a different order would result in stuff like the girl with the highest romance points dying first in Act 1. I really didn't want to see Sayuri in that state again and again... ;_;
Anyway, I think that's it for DDLC for me until we get this next game, if/when it comes out.
I had to take a break for a bit myself, so I certainly understand. There comes a time when one has to "open the door to the outside", so to speak.
Game Theory has Things to Say about the Plus content, because of course they do. I'll certainly relay that here, plus of course any interesting arts and videos.
But the core game? As I said at the start, it's a pretty simple affair -- and has a result has a whole lot of mods. (Many of them having a theme of saving one or more of the club members from the cycle, or expanding on elements that didn't get developed.)
I rather liked your idea of having a mechanic-based pattern to Monika's hackery, rather than bullying the "childhood best friend" each and every time on the assumption that she *must* be the greatest threat. I, too, get more than a little wrung out with what seems to be a fixed point in time. Is it any wonder so much fan art shows Sayori thriving and going to prom, getting a job, getting married?
Anyway, thanks for sharing your experiences in the Lit Club. If you are looking for similar, Nitroplus has a minimal-cast meta-VN called "You and Me and Her", which also knocks down the fourth wall (while crying about what the player puts the game characters through) and features a few twists that will seem familiar -- though "You and Me and Her" came out in 2013, and was pretty obscure in North America until after DDLC came out....
Alternatively, if you're looking for something more heartwarming, there's always "Katawa ShĂ´jo", which I mentioned in an earlier post.
I'll close the post by sharing a screenshot I took from the DDLC anime intro. Consider it a bonus token for going through the entire expanded game.
They may never be real, and yet, fandom being what it is, we come to care for them anyway.
I tried to post this before, but the image was a little too large for successful posting, and wasn't legible shrunken down.
Also, the DDLC subreddit has gotten itself locked off behind adult content walls. It was possible to link directly to an image preview, though, so enjoy a look at what could be the last entry in the Side Stories verse....
Team Salvato: "Monika will never be real, she can't hurt you."
Google Analytics: "Are you sure about that?"
In which Game Theory talks about Machine Learning, the increasing use of neural networks to personalize the Internet, and the possibility that someone, someday, may make a Turing-capable digital assistant or game character -- and what that means for us.
MatPat from Game Theory dives into the Plus content, though not without a bit of a fakeout.
In which we meet the Metaverse team, learn why Dan didn't consider our protagonist a character (unlike in other VNs), and -- in a callback to that BSOD message -- confront the possibility that, like Agent Smith in the second Matrix movie, Monika may have found a way to exit the game into someone's body. Someone with access to the unreleased but ongoing "Virtual Machine" projects....
Well, another scholastic year is about to start, so time for another visit to the fan-made material.
So, in the game you see all the tense dynamics with the Literature Club -- but what if they had a rival team? Would the members be able to over come their various issues and pull together?
Today marks the 5th anniversary of the launch of DDLC. Also, in-game (or the Monika After Story mod), today is canonically Monika's birthday.
While The Tube Of You has various new messages, I thought that I would commemorate things by showing us a look back with a documentary about the origins and inspirations for the game....
November is a month for memory. This post, however, is going to go back along a different -- and more poignant -- track than the recent fare.
Before the Literature Club, before "You and Me and Her", there were... the Disability Girls.
Now you may well think "wait, a bunch of weeby 4channers made a dating sim visual novel about assorted deaf/blind/amputee/burn-scarred young ladies? What kind of train wreck resulted?!"
But while 4chan's reputation as the Mos Eisley Spaceport of the Internet is well-deserved, "Katawa ShĂ´jo"... was not what one might think.
Anyway, the long involved story of the game's creation finally found a larger audience on the Tube of You....
(The title of the documentary, alas, is a little bit clickbaity: Yes, one can view Young Love In Physical Action (making allowances for the protagonist's heart condition), but such scenes are very much optional and not part of core gameplay.)
I found a playthrough of KS that didn't have overlaid commentary on it. I won't spoil the whole game, but the intro and opening credits are.... well....
It's a very different game than DDLC in many respects, but one sees, perhaps, what a "vanilla" DDLC could be. After all, if there's one message true to both games, it's there's more than one way for one's heart to be set racing....
Although Katawa Shoujo and Doki Doki Literature Club! were both created using Ren'Py, the latter seems to be a lot easier to modify. Also, KS doesn't use .chr files (which are more of a mechanical convenience for DDLC than anything else).
Still, if Monika is right and DDLC is a cursed game (as she asserts in the not-so-good Act 4 ending), then it'd be nice to give at least some of the cast the opportunity to transfer to Yamaku in the hope of healing....
(I've found another "what if a DDLC character was in KS?" artwork, but it goes to a very dark place....)
BigBadToyStore has a massive selection of toys (like action figures, statues, and collectibles) from Marvel, DC Comics, Transformers, Star Wars, Movies, TV Shows, and More
www.bigbadtoystore.com
Around $70 in person. Ultimately felt that price wasn't worth having a figure creeping me out from wherever she was displayed. She comes with a desk, naturally.
OH GOD IT INCLUDES THE BROKEN FACE DNICIENJEKCJUCDIIJD...
...I didn't see that on the box! Maybe the version I saw was a basic one? Or, they don't show the broken face on the box to mess with you when you open it.
BigBadToyStore has a massive selection of toys (like action figures, statues, and collectibles) from Marvel, DC Comics, Transformers, Star Wars, Movies, TV Shows, and More
www.bigbadtoystore.com
Around $70 in person. Ultimately felt that price wasn't worth having a figure creeping me out from wherever she was displayed. She comes with a desk, naturally.
OH GOD IT INCLUDES THE BROKEN FACE DNICIENJEKCJUCDIIJD...
...I didn't see that on the box! Maybe the version I saw was a basic one? Or, they don't show the broken face on the box to mess with you when you open it.
Those Nendoroids aren't exactly cheap chibi representations of our favourite characters.... Although it would be funny to put Monika with Starscream and see what happens....
At least all the club got Youtooz, which led to this response:
I had thought about adding her jumpscare face to the image gallery of Monika that I put in the bakery for Halloween, but I thought that foxberri's cosplay did a good job of making Monika look scary without any yellow makeup.
Sparky (the replacement Monika in Square One Cosplay) has done a jumpscare face for a cosplay music video, but the only still I've saved so far was where she's crawling out of a television Ring-style.
Considering that I had Space Classroom Gibika as well as those two, perhaps it would have been cartoonish lily-gilding to add this from the Markiplier playthrough cartoon...
