Doki Doki Literature Club
● What are the game mechanics?
Because DDLC is a text based game, the core mechanics are just clicking and pressing space in order to read through dialogue between characters and make your personal choices to affect the outcome of the game.
● List 3 examples of feedback loops. Describe them.
- A main component of the game is the creation of poems, where the player is simply asked to choose words from multiple lists. The player then finds that each choice is favored by a specific character and can use that knowledge in the future to cater toward their favorite player(s) when creating more poems. This ultimately affects your player’s interaction with said characters in the end.
- The player can choose who to talk to and show their poems at many points throughout the game, and as the game progresses they will realize that their choices on which characters to favor in this sense affects their interactions with surrounding characters. This can also be used to influence the direction of the game and the tones of interactions with each character.
- The player can also choose at a few points in the game which character(s) they wish to interact with outside of the main story setting (the literature club at school) and are often asked to choose between two specific characters. These decisions are just as important and again, will affect future character interactions.
● Discuss the relation between narrative and feedback loops.
The feedback loops are directly related to and directly affect the narrative and the direction that the story is headed in. This particular game has more than one ending, and the player finds throughout the gameplay that their decision making can affect character interactions and eventually the overall narrative itself. The way that the feedback loops are set up allows the player to create their own story to an extent and directly affect the narrative while playing, if they are aware and deliberate with their decision making.