Why is everything a "+" these days? Let's Play Doki Doki Literature Club +

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Let's Play Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!



I've been devoting my Tuesday/Thursday release slot to more reading based releases. I just finished reading all of Heart of the Jedi, and now it's time to move onto the next project.

What is this?
Doki Doki Literature Club is a cute dating sim visual novel where the protagonist is recruited to join a high school literature club by his childhood friend. Some have described it as a psychological horror, and while high school may have been a horror for some people, that is complete slander. It actually isn't and if that's something that will turn you off from enjoying the LP, this is your warning).

DDLC was originally released in 2017 as freeware. The Premium rerelease (DDLC+) came out October 2021. It was ported from Ren'Py to Unity. To the best of my knowledge, the story is still the same. However, there are a lot of new features, wallpapers, music, side stories, etc.

Is this a blind run?
Sort of, but no. I have played through this before, but only taking Yuri's route. I have also skimmed the guide for the good ending, but aside from some slight spoilers, everything that isn't on Yuri's route is new to me. You can see my old playthrough here. Because that's already been covered, Yuri's route is not going to be available for voting, although because I plan on getting 100% completion, I may end up her route as well last. However, that depends entirely on whether or not it is needed.

Voting?
That's right! Voting. To start us off, I need you to vote which route I take for the first run:
Good ending: 1 (nweismuller)
Sayori:
Natsuki: 1 (Snowball)
Yuri: Not available

Voting will close on Friday June 10 at 9PM PDT, and I'll stream on Friday at 9:30PM PDT on my twitch channel


Why is this voiced?
Because I think it's silly, and I enjoy doing voices, even when 80% of the cast is girls. I hope it's not too off-putting. If someone does want to join for a stream or two to give their take on any of the girls' voices, do let me know and I'd be more than happy to have you cohost an episode (or a bunch!).


Spoiler Policy?
I'd prefer if you keep spoilers tagged. Episode 2 has some spoilers because nweis can't help himself with the puns in stream chat, and I hadn't formulated my spoiler policy yet when he was doing so.


Episode List

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Episode 1: Return to the Beginning


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I've played through this episode four times already. First for my original stream of this (lost the footage), second to rerecord (mic was broken and the sound quality was ass!), third to rererecord (that's the version on the playlist above), and fourth for this entry.

We get a rather cliche opening, loner high school student getting roped into an activity (or club) by his childhood friend. And the club consists of four archetypes, the childhood friend, the tsundere, the quiet girl, and the popular girl that leads the club. Is this all that there is, a cute dating sim? Or is there something deeper? There's something deeper.

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Episode 2: Did you say Manga?


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So, with Snowball's vote, we're taking Natsuki's path for now. She's cutesy, likes manga, and is a complete tsundere. However, we're not too far down her route, and we can still switch to the good route instead. Depends on votes.


Please vote which path I take:
Good ending: 1 (nweismuller)
Sayori:
Natsuki: 1 (Snowball)
Yuri: Not available

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Episode 3: Just a Little Peek


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Marissa breaks the tie for us, so we will be going down Natsuki's path. Natsuki is of course stubborn and set in her ways. That gets us very close to peeking up her skirt, and all the problems that that causes.

Please vote which path I take:
Good ending: 1 (nweismuller)
Sayori:
Natsuki: 2 (Snowball, Marissa)
Yuri: Not available

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Episode 4: Four, Just Like the Wall that We Keep Breaking


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The school festival is coming up, and that means we're close to the end of act 1. We've written all three act 1 poems to Natsuki, so we are firmly on her path. Sayori is acting quite weird though, it's almost like it's foreshadowing.

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Episode 5: Act I Has Experienced an Unexpected Error


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Sorry, the post is quite late. However, we have reached the end of Act 1. And the end of other things as well. This episode does get dark, but we at least have a wonderful date with Natsuki beforehand baking cupcakes, and we do reach the start of the School Festival. And we wrap things off with some really weird shit.

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Episode 6: Act II is Act I All Over Again


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So, this was supposed to come out last Thursday. The uploads were up, I just could not get a post up. Too many things pulling me in different directions. I'm going to pause releases this week, partially because I don't have a backlog, partially because I have a ton of things to do in RL.

Anyway, this episode has us teleport all the way back to the start of the game, but we're missing Sayori. The game behaves very strange, full of glitches, and it becomes obvious that Monica is able to mess with the game, almost as if she's aware that this is a game.

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Episode 7: Act II is a Glitchy Mess


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So yeah, I'm back after 6 weeks instead of just one week. Oops!

Anyway, it's quite fitting that Act 2 continues to be incredibly glitched out. Girls are talking with possessed voices, and lots of other things. Still we're back, and I even have the next episode already recorded, which wraps up Natsuki's route.

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Episode 8: All Hail Monica!


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And so, with this two hour monstrosity, we wrap up Act 2, do all of Act 3, and get the bad end. That is the end for Natsuki's route. Next on the list is Sayori. Let's see if we can do any better. Spoiler, I'm pretty sure we can't.

If things go according to plan, I'll be streaming the next part in 20ish hours.

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Episode 9: Natsuki didn't work out well. How about Sayori?


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So, I at least told the truth that I'd be streaming soon after posting the last episode. I just didn't get around to uploading it until over 2 months later. Oops!

Anyway, I'm back now, and starting off on Sayori's route to see how that goes for us, and if we have any better luck. We won't.

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Episode 10: Sayori is Still a Klutz


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First new recording since my hiatus. Sayori is and always will be a klutz. Also, the foreshadowing of death in this episode is insane! They tried to cram as much of it as they could it seems.

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Episode 11: Sayori is Out of it Again


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Once again, we're coming to the end of act 1. We've written our third poem, and that just leaves the weekend event. Sayori is really out of it in this episode, and even leaves home early. It's almost like she's... hanging on by a thread.

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Episode 12: Saved With the Power of LOVE! ... Or Not


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Trying to fix our mistake from the last run, I confess my love to Sayori to try to save her life. I don't think it comes as any surprise to realize that it doesn't work. This game is quite cursed. However, Sayori's second death marks the end of Act 1, let's move onto our second round of Act II.

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Episode 13: Act II, But Fast Forward


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Just like with the start of Act 1, there's a lot of the same stuff in Act 2, so we skip all of it, and then start enjoying the glitchfest.

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Episode 14: Act II, But Quickly Finishing It


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A little more fast forwarding, a little longer of an episode covering two days, plus the weekend, and we reach the end of Act 2 just like that. I've been collecting things I've missed on the previous runs, and the next episode is going to be a very annoying look at Act 3.

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I live and I'm back! This wraps up our second run through. And it also features a cohost, Snowball.

Episode 15: Act III, But Doing it Slowly


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As promised in the last post, this episode was so annoying that it took me 9 months to do. Most of that was the first half of this year giving me no time for anything, but the rest of it was trying to get a time that worked well for me and a cohost. Because this episode is just sitting in the void and waiting for Monika to talk long enough to get the achievement for letting her monologue for long enough.

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Episode 16: Starting the third loop. It's Yuri Time!


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Snowball sticks around for another episode since these were recorded back to back. The third loop focuses on Yuri. This is now going over stuff I've done before, because I previously played the Yuri route on the original version of DDLC.

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Episode 17: Yuri Perfection!


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We get the perfect poem for Yuri, and then continue down her route.

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Episode 18: This is (not) Yuri's Poem


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Compared to the other two girl's Yuri's route is a little different. We need to make sure that our poem is not written to Yuri in order to get the right poem. We'll do "3 poems for Yuri" in a later run.

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Episode 19: A Weekend Alone with Yuri


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Yuri's route means we help her with decorations over the weekend. So, she comes over and we paint a poster together. Plus, there are lots of moments where our protagonist could have seized the day, but he didn't.

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Episode 20: Wrapping up Yuri's Route, and Getting an Annoying Secret


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In Act II, there's a secret that you can run into when you load the game. It took 90 minutes for the author of the guide I was using. Fortunately, it only took 20 minutes for me, and I edited out most of it.

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Episode 21: You Can (Not) Get the Good Ending


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Nweismuller joins us for this stream. It's great to have a friend co-hosting because there's a lot of dialogue skipping this time through. Sadly, on my first attempt of this, I reset too soon on Sayori's route, and I didn't get her last picture, and didn't get the good ending. Fortunately, I've edited down the two runs, so you don't need to watch through two full playthroughs. Despite this being the good ending, we still have a lot more content, so this is far from over.

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Episode 22: Cleanup and Files


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Nweismuller is still on the stream as it's the same one as last time. This time, we get all but one achievement from the story mode by writing a poem to each girl during act 1. After that, we move on to cheese the towekeys minigame. I'd say play, but I just used the guide to get the texts unlocked. I didn't bother actually trying to solve the puzzles.

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Episode 23: TRUST the Sidestories


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The sidestories turn out to be prequels to the game. Right now, we're at the founding of the Literature Club. At first it's... Just Monika, but Sayori joins, and that starts the plot of this sidestory.

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Episode 24: Trust Monica (You really shouldn't)


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Monica learns Sayori's secret. It also makes it very clear that sidestories need to be done after the main story, even though they're prequels.

Also, I just reached 100 subs on youtube. Woo!

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Double-header day!
Two releases today. Episode 25 came out on time (it's been scheduled for two weeks), but I'm going to be MCing a festival this weekend, and I just got the program Monday night, so I've been scrambling to get a script/outline done, and didn't get around to posting it here.

Episode 25: Understanding Yuri


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Yuri finally follows up on the invitation she received from Monica and joins the club. It's a rocky start at first, but she makes it through.





Episode 26: Understanding the Doki's Problems More


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What happens when Yuri admits that she hates people trying hard to make her happy, and Sayori admits that she loves trying hard to make people happy? A cute hug.

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Another extra delayed double-header!
Two more releases today. Both episodes came out on time, but I basically have gone from festival prep, to festival cleanup, to wedding prep (not my wedding, but I am the best man, so I'm doing a bunch of stuff to get ready). Unfortunately, that also means I'm down to no backlog on this. In fact, I only have three days left in my backlog. I'm going to try to stream the next sidestory tonight if possible to make some more progress, but it's completely possible that there will be a weeklong gap in my releases soon.

Episode 27: Respect the Manga Weeb


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Natsuki finally joins the Literature Club. However, her brash personality clashes with Monica's and she is disrespected for liking manga.




Episode 28: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me


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Monika falls in love with manga, and apologizes to Natsuki. She also sees just how badly Natsuki is bullied by her "friends".

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Episode 29: The Dokis are out of Balance. They Might Fall Over


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Just like with Yuri, Sayori is a bit too pushy when it comes to making friends with Natsuki. Natsuki isn't all too happy to open up and share the way Sayori is.

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Episode 30: Perfectly Balanced. As All Things Should Be


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Sayori and Natsuki finally talk it out, even if it takes Natsuki writing her feelings out in poem form. This also gives us the last of the poems, filling up that section of the pictures menu

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Episode 31: Reflecting Like a Vampire


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Monica tries to setup a dialogue between Yuri and Natsuki on how to better use language. She must have rolled a 1 because it was a critical failure. On the bright side, Natsuki just rocketed up to best Doki thanks to this side story. She's correct on not wanting to censor herself.

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Episode 32: Letters Are Not Mirrors, But They Reflect Feelings


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It takes a lot of work on Sayori and Monika's parts, but they attempt to heal the rift between Yuri and Natsuki. It does seem to work as they both get in better touch with their feelings, and Yuri even matures enough to try to reach out and start a connection with Natsuki.

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Episode 33: No, Natsuki! Self-love is a sin!


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Natsuki just so happens to stop by near where Yuri is reading. Is it an accident? Either way, it leads to then starting to talk and hang out. We also learn more about Natsuki's toxic friends.


We're on the final stretch of episodes. The recordings are all done. The finale will be next Tuesday, and Thursday will be a bonus video grabbing the last achievement I didn't get during normal play.

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Episode 34: I guess that kind of Self Love is OK


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Natsuki and Yrui develop their friendship even more. They realize they really are kindred souls, they just have very different coping mechanisms. Natsuki has put on a strong facade and became very extroverted. Yuri closed herself off to all but a few people.

This is the last regular sidestory mission. Next week is the finale and the bonus episode. After that, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! is complete.

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Episode 35 FINALE: This All Equals...


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We have reached the end of the side stories with one last chapter that sums up all that the girls learned while setting up the club.

Last episode on Thursday will be an achievement hunt for the one achievement that I missed.

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Episode 36 BONUS: One Missing Achievement


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This is it. The final video of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! We managed to get everything! All the pictures, all the achievements, all the tower keys, all the emails, all the endings, all the information.

We are finally complete. After being introduced to Doki Doki Literature Club in January 2021, it's good to finally be done.



I'll be fixing this thread for archiving next week or so. I was hoping to jump straight into Date A Live Rio Reincarnation for Tuesday/Thursday release starting next week, but I'm going to take a 2 week break from Tuesday/Thursday releases. I'll have something special for Little Nightmares on Halloween, and then resume this slot the first full week of November.