The concord between player and game doesn’t get to be re-erected in the wake of that. This insight enables her to manipulate the objective world around her, ramping up the negative personality traits of the other characters to achieve the happy ending she is otherwise incapable of having. But ultimately, none of that matters because Monika is aware of her existence within a video game. You go through the motions that the game seems to demand: composing poems, making choices. You are positioned as you – the player rather than the player-character – and you become the direct addressee of Monika’s obsession. Their depictions feel like statements of genuine understanding for the struggles against depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or trauma.ĭDLC doesn’t just break the fourth wall with a casual wink towards the player a la Metal Gear Solid it shatters the fourth wall. Taken on their own, these snippets offer gentler portrayals of mental illness. Side Stories comprise half a dozen new stories that explore the origins of the Literature Club and the relationships between the four girls in it before the player came onto the scene. The game may be widely loved, but that doesn’t make it blameless.ĭDLC+ Side Stories were an opportunity for redemption – an opportunity grasped at but not quite reached.

On one hand, that’s part of what makes DDLC so memorable on the other, it finds a home within the broader social contexts of stigmatization and stereotyping of mental illness.

Heightened as the depictions of mental illness are for most of the player’s time with the game, they lack the nuance to seem truly earnest. To the developers’ credit, they try to justify the extreme portrayals through the game’s fourth wall-breaking meta-awareness of its constructedness, but the shocks are too shocking. Its cutesy aesthetic belies a troubling narrative that plays up mental health issues for shock value. Not for nothing is DDLC considered a psychological thriller.

Doki doki literature club monika story