A few days ago I saw someone on Reddit (r/visualnovels) recommending this game. It’s a galgame on Steam called Doki Doki Literature Club!. Of course, when it was recommended I noticed the tag: Psychological Horror. I could sort of guess what that meant. This game, made by non-Japanese gaijin imitating a Japanese-style galgame, looks all harmonious and beautiful on the Steam page, but inside it’s probably a scam. There might be some “depressing” elements in there. “Depressing” — how depressing can you get? The heroine suddenly dies, suddenly loses her head, suddenly goes yandere, suddenly chops you up. That’s about the limit. At most it’s blood splattering all over the screen. What haven’t I seen? So curiosity made me download this free game and click “Start.” After a thrilling adventure, I repeatedly confirmed that the game had really, truly “End"ed, and only then did my heart settle back down. I let out a long sigh… Let me shamelessly brag for a moment. As a forever-alone otaku who’s been single since 2013, who’s too old to find a partner and keeps failing at arranged dates, I’ve played nearly several hundred galgames over these four years and written over a hundred impression posts. For a while I was playing galgames almost indiscriminately. Among them were plenty with crazy plot twists and horror content, but I was immune to almost all of them. Even that Sakura no Mori † Dreamers with evil spirits all over the screen, Honoakari no Toki no Hate Yori with blood-spraying zombies everywhere, the sudden hanging in Midori no Umi, the dismembered limbs in Hakoniwa Logic — all small stuff. Games like Clockup’s are even more whatever. I just smirk, completely unfazed. Out of all the games I’ve played, only two actually scared me. One was the sudden decapitated-head CG that pops up in 3days. The other… is this game. Doki Doki Literature Club!. There’s only one reason it scared me: it was sudden, way too sudden, no preparation whatsoever. Looking back after finishing it, I can say clearly: overall, Doki Doki Literature Club! is not a romance sim. It’s more like a horror game. Yeah, don’t be fooled by all the promotional material or the people in the comments saying how interesting it is. This really is a horror game. At the start it repeatedly emphasizes: if you have a weak mental constitution, don’t play; if you’re a kid, don’t play; if you’re a scaredy-cat, don’t play. That sentence is serious, not a joke! I know a lot of young folks can’t handle even a little “cruelty” in a galgame. I’ve seen people get spooked by the music in Hatsuyuki Sakura, people devastated because the little sister dies in Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai, people who can’t take how tragic the mermaid princess is in Suisou Ginka no Istoria, and people who want to mail razor blades to Niijima Yuu because the heroine in a story-within-a-story doesn’t get a happy ending in Majo Koi Nikki. For those people, stay the hell away from this game. It is not a romance game. It’s a horror game, a horror metagame in the same style as Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

Lately the stuff I’ve been playing has been a bit unusual — either hand-chopping, big meat grubs, or hookup — and after wandering the non-traditional aisle for so long, I couldn’t help but miss plain old moe. So when I was grabbing January releases, I figured I’d look for something light and fun. That’s how, among the January titles, while downloading Toukyou NECRO, I stumbled on this thing called Hanikami Clover. Compared to whatever Toukyou NECRO is doing, Hanikami Clover is obviously on the classic cute-girl-game track. So I got hyped, saw it was Ryokucha-soft, figured Ryokucha wouldn’t screw anything up — Minamijuujisei Renka (南十字星恋歌) got decent reviews, so this probably wouldn’t be a disaster either. Then I checked the official site for the cast: the first heroine is obviously Gotou Mai, and Hanikami Clover also has Akinohana, Sendai Eri, all solid voices. The most explosive part, though, was when I later watched the game’s OP. The dere-dere student council president, the sweet senpai, the lewd girlfriend, the little sister who’s a failure-of-a-brother manufacturing machine — all wrapped in a tempting, rhythm-heavy montage. The tagline was “a love story with a slightly H her.” Honestly, that OP makes it look like a moe-nukige, but hey, at least it beats hand-chopping big meat grubs and hookup games, am I right? Going by years of experience, this had to be a cheerful charmer of a moe game — and even if it’s a nukige, it’d be a comedy nukige, a light and fun one with no special effects. Playing it would definitely be a good time. My reaction at the time was: