All games are about relationships.
The nature of interactive media means that the player is invited to form attachments;
to begin to empathize with the characters in a story as they take on a persona within
a fictional world.
In creating his very own video game, Dan Salvato wanted to take this idea to the extreme.
He wanted to create a story that was filled with compelling characters that the player
would become attached to, forming genuine relationships with imaginary people, and feeling
genuine heartache when seeing them suffer from mental and emotional anguish.
In doing so, Dan didn’t merely create a story out of thin air.
He based his characters on his own experience with relationships – both real, and imaginary.
Somewhere along the way, by combining his love of fictional video game characters and
his real-world experiences of watching loved-ones go through crises, Dan managed to create a
horror game that took the world by storm.
This is the story of Doki Doki Literature Club, and the very real relationships that
inspired the game’s creation.
By his own admission, Dan Salvato wasn’t particularly cool in high school.
For the most part, he was lonely, wrapped up in himself, and unable to understand the
relationships that other students were forming, and how to truly empathize with others.
This isn’t to say that he didn’t have friends – Dan met his childhood best friend
when he was eleven, and the pair eventually became roomates after school when they got
older.
Dan was a man of many talents, rising to prominence first and foremost as a professional Super
Smash Bros Melee player.
He enjoyed a good stint of time on the professional circuit, and even went so far as to create
some mods for the game, before ultimately retiring to do something new.
Dan also developed a love for speedrunning, setting some records for Yoshi’s Story on
the Nintendo 64, and tried his hand at designing an extension for Twitch, in order to make
chatting online more entertaining.
Dan loved all kinds of games, but he particularly found himself drawn to titles which delved
deep into emotional storytelling.
Games like Yume Nikki, Eversion, Braid, and Portal all caught Dan’s attention for the
way they built up an atmospheric world and told an engaging story that perfectly linked
up with their core gameplay.
This was also true of Dan’s personal favourite game, Riven, a point-and-click adventure game
that saw the player interacting with a barren world, without any need for extraneous dialogue
or exposition.
By contrast, Dan also developed a love-hate relationship with anime video games, and the
emerging genre of visual novels that were gaining popularity in the West.
On the one hand, Dan saw the charm in these games, in which the player has little to no
control of their actions as a story unfolds.
Simultaneously, though, he grew to despair at the common tropes and clichés that plagued
the genre.
Many of these games boiled down to a simple formula, which Dan felt could be encapsulated
by the phrase “cute girls, doing cute things”.
There was no variety in many of these stories, no attempt to push the genre or make the player
think.
As Dan pondered his relationship with these games – his guilty fascination with their
storytelling – he began to wonder what it would be like to make a visual novel that
messed with the player’s perceptions.
Talking with a friend, he mused about how much fun it would be to make a game that appeared
to be a typical dating simulator, but which soon spiraled out of control as the player
watched the game fall apart, with characters in-fighting amongst themselves, and a glitchy
world teasing the idea that this game was more than just a simple simulation.
This game, thought Dan, would be a visual novel for people who hated visual novels.
It would give fans of the genre something new and original, while simultaneously poking
fun at tired clichés, and pushing the boundaries of what was possible for this type of gameplay.
Dan’s friend loved the idea, responding positively, and based on this, Dan began wondering
just what it might be like to try and create such a title.
And so, Dan began trying to make his game idea a reality.
At first, things seemed easy – coming up with the general plot and broad strokes of
the characters was relatively simple.
Soon, though, Dan found that the big challenge was in the actual writing.
His game would involve a lot of dialogue, while it would be relatively small by the
standards of most visual novels.
Even so, this was a lot of work for Dan to do, and he had to make sure that he kept the
project very tightly focused so that all of his branching story options didn’t overwhelm
him.
As Dan worked writing the game, he couldn’t help but feel that reality was bleeding into
his creation.
What started as typical anime stereotypes soon became more complex, as Dan began drawing
from his own experiences, people that he’d known, and relationships that he’d had,
in order to give the characters more depth.
In particular, Dan drew from his experiences with loved ones who’d suffered from insecurities,
anxiety, depression, and other mental and emotional illnesses.
He almost felt like, in exploring these themes, he could force the player to confront uncomfortable
subjects that don’t often get enough attention in the more mainstream media.
Certainly, his tactics were sloppy and he didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but
Dan hoped that, maybe, his little game might be able to help in some small way with raising
awareness of depression.
To this end, while all of his characters reflected these themes, Dan worked hard to make the
player character’s adorable childhood friend Sayori feel particularly real.
As he drew from his own personal experiences, Dan gave Sayori many of the little signs of
depression that he’d seen first-hand.
Sayori was often nervous, and had difficulty expressing her emotions or dealing with anxiety.
She slept a lot, sometimes being unable to leave her bed, and often felt the need to
hide away from the world when her energy levels were too low.
In order to help players to truly connect with his characters, Dan reached out to some
artists that were far more talented than himself in order to commission the visuals for the
game.
Dan commissioned manga artist Satchely to create all of his character art, while another
artist, Velinquent, drew the backgrounds.
In commissioning his character art, Dan was very descriptive as he worked with Satchely,
asking for very specific things so that he could get the characters’ emotions and appearance
to look exactly as he imagined them.
On the other hand, Velinquent had a little more free reign, as Dan wasn’t quite as
certain of what he wanted, so long as the backgrounds looked like typical visual novel
fare.
Beyond getting these two artists involved, Dan did as much as he could himself to create
the game’s overall presentation the way he envisioned it in his head.
He was particularly pleased with his work on the game’s opening title screen, and
even created the music from scratch.
While his musical ability was limited, Dan did his best with the game’s soundtrack.
Thankfully, a simple, repetitive musical style fitted the look he was going for with his
game, so while he admitted that his compositions weren’t groundbreaking, he was adequately
satisfied with what he could come up with.
The most important piece of music, in Dan’s eyes, was the end credits song.
He wanted a piece of music which, like Still Alive in Portal, perfectly capped off the
game’s story and narrative themes, providing the player with some degree of closure.
The big draw for Dan’s game would be its fourth-wall breaking narrative, and as such,
he did everything he could to hide easter eggs and secrets in plain sight within the
files of the game.
In forcing the player to explore game files in order to progress through the story, Dan
hoped that he’d achieve his goal of making players feel like the game was escaping its
traditional boundaries.
At the start of the game, the player would inhabit a role within a typical visual novel,
but by the end, they’d seen the characters as real, and see themselves as the true protagonists
of their adventure.
All of this hinged on Dan being able to create compelling characters that the player would
truly want to invest in, developing authentic relationships with fictional people.
He worried that perhaps he was going too far with his game, and with some of the themes
of trauma and heartbreak that came up in his story.
Perhaps people would accuse him of being cruel; of telling a story that deliberately tugged
at the player’s heartstrings for shock value.
As such, he decided that he ought to release the game for free – that way, people wouldn’t
feel so bad when they discovered that they’d been lied to about the content of the game.
Not long after it launched, Dan also added an in-depth content warning to help avoid
those with genuine mental health concerns from being confronted with something unexpected
that they didn’t want to experience.
While Dan had hoped that people would like his game, he was taken completely by surprise
by the reaction that his work received.
The game was downloaded in the millions, as players from all walks of life (and all levels
of interest in anime games) embraced his creepy story.
What really took Dan by surprise was the popularity of Monika, the game’s antagonist.
People really seemed to connect with her, to the point that her fictional Twitter account
earned hundreds of thousands of followers.
Perhaps the most satisfying feedback of all, though, came from those who saw Doki Doki
Literature Club as a reflection of their own experiences.
Dan had worried that the themes in his game might be too raw for some players.
As the game grew in popularity, he was relieved to receive messages from many people with
experiences of mental health problems who’d tried his game, and who’d loved it.
Many said that the game had even helped them to work through their own challenges, or expressed
their appreciation at Dan’s in-depth analysis of the challenges of depression and mental
illness.
Dan was satisfied.
He’d achieved his goal of creating a game that reflected his own relationships both
with people he knew, with demons he’d faced, and with the anime genre as a whole.
He only hoped that his next game could live up to the reputation of this first interactive
media creation.
The moral of the story is that light can come from darkness.
In some way or other, everyone’s lives will be touched by sadness.
We’ll all either experience mental health challenges ourselves, or associate with people
who struggle with these issues.
Empathy can be a challenging skill to develop, but a genuine desire to understand another’s
perspective is a powerful force in creating bonds between people.
Facing our personal demons often seems less achievable than avoiding or burying them,
but for some recognizing these things in ourselves is freeing.
It’s important to remember, you are not your illness.
A person with depression, or anxiety, or any other struggle, is more than a diagnosis,
so much more rich and complex than can be reduced to a label.
We are so much more than the sum of our experiences and feelings, though we struggle to separate
these things out sometimes.
Don’t be afraid to tackle big themes, break taboos, challenge stigma, or bring barriers
crumbling down in your work.
It can be scary to put your voice out in the world, you may worry that your experience
is not representative, or that people will not relate to it.
You may question whether your creative vision ought to be realized at all.
Own your perspective and your experiences; your contributions might just resonate with
and bring hope to a fellow human, or simply help you on your path towards peace of your
own.