The average visual novel contains over 10,000 words. In Team Salvato’s Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!, you’re tasked with writing some of them. 

This deceptive dating sim is a seemingly sunny adventure…until it’s not. It follows a high school literature club that writes poems, then shares and critiques them with each other. This daily custom begins innocently enough as each girl passes around their usually positive and sometimes puzzling prose. Some poems are more straightforward, while others are purposefully obtuse. But all of them, no matter the subject matter, expertly amp up the foreboding atmosphere until you begin to question the game’s true intentions. 

That’s because there’s so much power in each verse, from the way your own poems can affect certain members’ feelings toward you to the potentially unsettling tidbits each club member reveals with each new piece. It’s a testament to the power of words that, with a few simple sentences, the game’s tone can change drastically, from a cheery dating sim to a bleak psychological nightmare. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. And in DDLC Plus!, words can make or break your entire reality. 



As the newest club member, you spend time with Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri, and Monika at school and during meetings. Each girl has their own unique writing style that reveals their innermost feelings, for better or worse. When you write your own poems to share, you choose the perfect words from a list of options that might appeal to a specific character. This determines the path the story will ultimately take—and which girl you could potentially end up with as a romantic partner.

But it’s not all about falling in love and happily ever after. Midway through, DDLC Plus! shifts gears dramatically. The unexpected change gives the game’s poems an indispensable role in the transformation, which tends to send new players reeling. Crafting poems is deceptively simple but has significant ramifications. As you progress, you unlock new words to write more complex pieces, and as such learn more about the club members.

Each poem plays a vital role in unveiling each girl’s true motives. They make for an intense, unfiltered window into each character’s psyche. As the story continues and the tension ratchets up with each new revelation, the poems you’re reading and writing become even more terrifying at times.

Natsuki’s simplistic style obscures several layers of complexity that echo the difficulties she faces outside the club. Yuri’s poems stand out thanks to her intricate and sometimes unsettling nature. Sayori’s seemingly bright inner voice shakily gives way to a cry for help from someone whose sunny personality belies inner struggles. Meanwhile, club president Monika’s poems seem to suggest a deeper understanding of reality in a way that sends chills down your spine. Is it possible that she’s aware you—and her—are both playing a video game?

While you might share touching verses about benign topics at first, your poems soon escalate to address each character’s challenges. That means speaking to Sayori’s struggles with depression or Natsuki’s disturbing home life. You have the power to push the narrative forward, but the poems always provide the ambiance, as even the girls’ dialogue takes a backseat to how visceral their writing can truly be. 



Monika’s role in the story is especially important, as her poems often suggest a level of awareness that breaks the fourth wall, which creates an eerie connection between you and the normally aloof club president. And when Sayori can’t handle the pressures of everyday life, her poems read like a journal leading to a tragedy. All of this is accomplished by way of simple poems. Where dialogue could get the job done, poetry accomplishes the same thing with added terror, tension, and confusion—enhancing every single part of the DDLC Plus! experience.

This visual novel could just stop at delivering a well-written story with traditional dialogue and branching scenes. It would be a fantastic play if it just stopped there. Instead, it offers a moving demonstration of the power of words and their ability to evoke a spectrum of emotions. A simple change of wording in a poem can lead to vastly different outcomes. It challenges you to think about the weight and consequences of your choices, even when the game seems straightforward and innocent at first. It proves that words can change your entire world. Words can be used as a weapon. And words can be used to save people.

Through a simple poem-writing mechanic, DDLC Plus! manages to explore themes of love, depression, self-awareness, and horror. It does this in a way that’s both accessible and easy to understand, all while celebrating poetry as an art form. From your first shining moments as a club member to some of the very tense, heart-pounding sequences that eventually come up as you explore your literary career, DDLC Plus! takes poetry and elevates it to a point that proves how powerful what you say to someone can really be. And if you don’t believe the right words can make or break someone, you really should meet Sayori.