Doki Doki Literature Club, despite being categorized as a psychological/horror game, actually has a fairly simple and understandable storyline – if you can look past its chilling details. Let’s explore the overall plot and the story of the four girls in this peculiar club.
Understanding the Storyline
If you’re not aware, Doki Doki Literature Club (shortened to Doki Doki) is a short horror game disguised as a dating simulator – a simple novel that has been exceptionally prominent recently. The story revolves around a protagonist (the player) joining the school’s literature club with four female members including Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri, and the club president, Monika.
Spoiler Alert: Summary of the Plot
First and foremost, even after the game concludes (with Sayori’s suicide) and you start a “New Game” to “restart,” everything is considered part of the player’s gameplay (Chapters 1, 2, 3) until the Ending Credits, which marks the end of one playthrough.
The overall plot of Doki Doki encapsulates the theme of love from the girls towards this boy – with a darker and creepier undertone. All four girls are interested in this boy, but everything in the world of Doki Doki is under Monika’s control, including directly altering the game and communicating with the player. Consequently, Monika becomes jealous when you seem to favor someone else and gradually takes drastic measures to “delete” them from the game.
Introduction to the Characters
Sayori, your childhood friend and neighbor who introduces you to the club, receives more attention from you than the other three girls. Despite showing no apparent issues, Monika dislikes her and begins to negatively influence her thoughts.
In the evening, after Sayori confesses her feelings for you, whether you accept her love or opt to remain friends, Monika influences Sayori to commit suicide. Given Sayori’s personality (to be discussed later), if you reciprocate her feelings, she fears your excessive concern for her -> suicide; if you only want to remain friends, she becomes despondent -> suicide.
Yuri’s Role and Demise
Moving on to Chapter 2 (after Sayori’s death and starting a New Game), glitches and disruptions in the game become more pronounced (due to Monika deleting Sayori and adjusting the game accordingly without her). In some subsequent dialogue scenes, you can clearly see Monika’s desire for your attention (changing choices to your name, interrupting conversations). However, Yuri remains your next choice (since Natsuki seems less attentive to you).
Exploiting Yuri’s personality (obsessed with knives, self-harming tendencies – to be discussed later), Monika begins to manipulate her to become disagreeable and detestable in the eyes of the protagonist. However, inevitably, Yuri confesses her love to you – regardless of your response, she becomes overly excited and “stabs” herself, causing her to vanish from the game.
Natsuki’s Disappearance
Once again, the game becomes even more distorted and corrupted. You start a new game (Chapter 3) and find only Natsuki left in the club, but she quickly disappears after vomiting and fleeing from the screen (as you may already know). Monika returns alone and brings both of you into her own separate world.
Here, she earnestly recounts everything to the player, claiming that everything stemmed from her “love” for the player (not the in-game boy, but the player directly outside the PC/laptop…). She deletes everyone to be alone with the player forever.
Monika’s Revelation and Redemption
However, she also hints at how she deleted the files of the other girls and sits there gazing at the player indefinitely. Only when you access the game’s system files and delete her character file does the game continue with Monika gradually disappearing – pleading for the player’s help in desperation. In her final moments before fading, she realizes the grave extent of her wrongdoing and desires to make amends with her friends and the player – by restoring everything as it was before, so that everyone can have the happiest ending.
The Game’s Conclusion and Epilogue
Upon restarting the new game, everything begins as… from the beginning – only without Monika. Until the last moment, only Sayori and the player remain, and Sayori – the current club president – also becomes aware of Monika’s presence and her actions. At that moment, Sayori also gains that power and prepares to take the player into Monika’s former space to keep them to herself.
Before that can happen, Monika’s remaining traces (her voice) intervene and delete Sayori just before she can execute her plan. Monika herself acknowledges that this isn’t the ending she wanted for everyone. Here, she bids farewell and ends the game with a self-composed song dedicated to the player.
Explaining the Plot of Doki Doki Literature Club
Doki Doki Literature Club is simply a story about a computer program breaking free from reality/prison that it was designed to seek its own world, where she (Monika) can freely pursue her happiness and feelings with the player.
Monika’s Role and Motivation
Monika is a program primarily designed to introduce the player to this game and serve as a background character for the player’s dating session with the other 3 remaining members. However, when emotions exceed the permissible limit and jealousy arises, Monika starts to contemplate “eliminating” her friends to gain affection from the player. It is this jealousy that leads Monika to discover her “power.”
Endings
With Doki Doki’s storyline always aiming for the “best possible ending” for everyone, there are a total of 3 main endings as follows:
- Bad Ending: The ending as summarized above, Monika disappears, Sayori turns evil, and Monika has to erase everything for the player to be at peace.
- Good Ending: The best possible ending (only unlocked when the player accesses all dialogues of the 3 characters without anyone dying). With this ending, all 3 characters are content with the player’s affection for them, none want to keep it to themselves – and all are happy similar to what Monika desires.
- Alternate Ending: A rather… strange ending, when the player deletes Monika’s character file just before starting the game. Upon entering the game, in the first scene encountering Sayori, she is confused about who she is and the game immediately shuts down. When the game is reopened, only a picture of Sayori hanging with the text “Everyone will be happy” remains – indicating Monika’s revenge just before she appears in the game.
See more information in the Game Recommendation section here.
