Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! developers have announced that the game will have optional content warnings prior to graphic scenes.
For those unfamiliar, the original Doki Doki Literature Club is a parody and subversion of visual novel dating sims. The goal in these games is romance one out of several of the game’s characters. This does seem to happen with nearly all of the game’s “routes,” but one in particular starts the real game.
While avoiding spoilers, the game begins to “break the fourth wall;” giving the illusion it is glitching and even modifying itself. Characters become more unhinged and antisocial, and horrifying scenes play out.
The game was briefly blamed for the suicide of a UK teen, with the UK press taking liberties when describing the game. Nonetheless, the game was categorized under horror on game stores, and featured content warnings on store pages and when the game boots up.
Now, developers Team Salvato have revealed Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! will feature more optional content warnings. The blog post features an example screenshot, seemingly from when the game first boots up, asking if players would like detailed content warnings with spoilers, and that in-game content warnings can be enabled at any time via the settings.
The blog post explains that along with updating the content warning on start-up, the full content warning is now in-game (rather than an external website and URL). The optional small in-game content warnings when active “will appear shortly before certain scenes or moments that contain potentially sensitive content. This can be toggled on or off at any time while in-game via the settings menu.”
The system is compared to the accessibility settings and content warnings in Ikenfell. The blog post concludes that they hope this new feature can help those who wish to be warned, and will be updated over time with additional warnings “in places we might have originally missed.”
“We hope that this feature provides an option to those who would like to play through the game relatively unspoiled, but still want to be warned before potentially sensitive parts of the game. We do want to mention that while we did our best in placing these content warnings where we thought they would be most effective, everyone’s experience is different. Because of this, we intend to update this feature as time goes on with warnings in places we might have originally missed.
Accessibility options are becoming more and more common in video games today, a trend we’re hoping continues for years to come. In-game content warnings in particular are an accessibility feature that allows many players to enjoy games they would typically have to avoid, spoil themselves on beforehand, or put down part-way through due to subject matter they were not expecting to see.”
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! launches June 30th on Windows PC (via Steam, and Serenity Forge), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. A physical version will also launch via the Serenity Forge online store.
