[Review] Doki-Doki Literature Club

Hi guys,

Wow, it's so dusty in here *grabs a spider web* I wonder if there's still anyone visiting anymore. Anyways, for those who read this post, you'll be happy to know that I've found an illustrator. You know what that means? THAT YOU'LL SOON BE SEEING AN ACTUAL PROJECT OF MINE!!! Didn't expect that after all these years, eh?

Anyways, in the meantime, I've been thinking about posting reviews of games I liked. So, today, you're in for a special treat. It's called...

Doki Doki Literature Club

Ok, so this is a bit awkward, because Doki Doki Literature is actually very hard to describe without utterly spoiling the experience. From reading the description on its Steam page, you might think it's just another regular, overrated dating sim. Well, it's not. Definitely not. It's all a set-up. The game actually tries very hard to make you think it's dull and harmless, and it just makes it all the more effective at what it does.

Which is—take your sanity from you.

Believe me, this game is the work of a mad genius. If Frankenstein had made a video game, it would have been this.

I know what you're thinking right now—yeah, right, like a game could be that disturbing, I've played Slenderman, I've played Amnesia, I've played Layes of Fear, I've played Outlast, I can take the cute girls, dude, bring them on! Well, that's the mindset I approached Doki Doki Literature Club with, and frankly I ended up more disturbed than I cared to admit.

Because no matter all the horror games you've played, there are things you haven't seen yet. Take it from me. Mad genius, I'm telling you. And that includes genius.

So, heed the many warning signs that have been placed on your way to the game, and if you think you have it in you to see it to the end, then by all means, be my guest. You won't regret the journey.

So, why should you play Doki Doki Literature Club?

• Because it's a unique experience
• Because it's free
• Because sanity is an overrated commodity anyways
• Because the developers have poured their heart into it (and probably sold their soul to the devil at some point), and they deserve a thumbs up :)

Stay tuned for more reviews, and news on my latest project to come! :)

More News From The Moon

Hey guys,

I know many of you await news from the OpenRGSS project. Sadly I haven't been any further than what you have seen already. The main reason for this is that I'm stuck with technical issues. Simply put, there are things I will not be able to implement in Ruby, not because I cannot do it, but because Ruby is very slow and even with optimal programming, some processing-heavy functions slow down the engine too much. So, I would need to implement some of it in C++, which is Ruby's "parent" language. The problem is that I don't know the first thing about C++. So, if anyone who is knowledgeable about C++ happens to pass by, your help would be very much appreciated on those issues, it's mostly about investigating the Ruby/SDL gem's source code and helping me with syntax and stuff - nothing too time-consuming, really. Also, if you know someone who might be able to help me, please do spread the word. As soon as I get past those lil' setbacks, I can resume OpenRGSS's development.

While I'm there, I would like to share my feelings regarding something which has been bugging me. I know the Script Manager has rendered the installation of my scripts less intuitive, especially since I have still not released the update like I had promised a while ago. Still, as open to criticism as I might be, I do not accept comments like "I don't understand the first thing about your site, make another tutorial". I can understand your frustration and I'm honored you absolutely want my scripts in your games, but I am not a company, I am not making business out of scripting, I have not sold anything to you and I am not an after-sales service either. I have made those scripts for the sake of making them, and nothing forces me to share them in the first place. I might as well shut this blog down tomorrow and close my MediaFire account just because I feel like it, and keep my own scripts to my own self, and there would be nothing to lose as far as I'm concerned. Because I share my creations does not mean I have pledged to have them work perfect in each and every one's games. If you address me without the slightest "please" or are implying that I did a poor job, you're welcome to look for scripts elsewhere and I will definitely not mind you not using mine, really. People who have no respect for others' works do not make games I like to play, anyways,

So, basically, if you have no consideration for me, don't expect me to have consideration for you and your game, either. And don't come bragging about how you will never use my scripts to punish my arrogance, because frankly I don't care. People who have addressed me in a friendly, respectful manner, can testify I sympathize with others' issues and often do my best to help them while there's nothing for me to gain in return. The others can keep on asking and complaining as long as they like.

Sorry about this little digression, nothing has changed towards my faithful readers, and I'll make sure to let you know it as soon as I have solved my C++ issues.

Take care in the meantime.

Now we're talking gameplay

*commenting on a project with no gameplay information at all*

ME - Gameplay is the core of your game, please think about it.
SOME GUY - WTF? You kidding me? That game has awesome gameplay man!
ME - I'm very curious as to how you can tell since there is no information whatsoever.
THE GUY - Simply by seeing the author uses Zeus81's Ultimate AMS! That's more than good enough for me! (Zeus81's Ultimate AMS is a script which improves the player's movement inside the game)

(thinking hard for something clever to answer)

ME - Right. So your ultimate enjoyment in a video game is to move your character. You stick to the simple bare necessities, as said the great philosopher Baloo.

50 video games that made an impression on me

...in no particular order, except they are categorized by platform and somewhat in the order I've got to know them.

1. Oxyd (Atari ST)
2. Monkey Island (Atari ST)
3. Loom (Atari ST)
4. Lemmings (Atari ST)
5. Gobliins (Atari ST)
6. Hunter (Atari ST)
7. Flashback (PC)
8. Day of the Tentacle (PC)
9. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (PC)
10. Robinson's Requiem (PC)
11. Tyrian 2000 (PC)
12. The Dig (PC)
13. Doom (PC)
14. Descent (PC)
15. Duke Nukem 3D  (PC)
16. Shadow Warrior (PC)
17. Blood (PC)
18. Lords of the Realm (PC)
19. Privateer 2 - The Darkening  (PC)
20. Z (PC)
21. Broken Sword [The Knights of Baphomet in French] (PC)
22. Master of Orion (PC)
23. War Wind  (PC)
24. Dungeon Keeper (PC)
25. Starcraft (PC)
26. Afterlife (PC)
27. Populous 3 - The Beginning (PC)
28. Jedi Knight
29. Serious Sam
30. The Nomad Soul (PC)
31. Legacy Of Kain - Soul Reaver 2 (PC)
32. Halo (PC)
33. Deus Ex (PC)
34. Black & White (PC)
35. Aquanox (PC)
36. Diablo (PC)
37. Prey (PC)
38. Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (PC)
39. Pokémon (GameBoy)
40. Super Mario World (SNES)
41. Tales of Phantasia (SNES)
42. Chrono Trigger (SNES)
43. Final Fantasy VIII (PSX)
44. Valkyrie Profile (PSX)
45. Shin Megami Tensei - Persona (PSX)
46. Beyond Good & Evil (PS2)
47. Psychonauts (PS2)
48. Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time (PS2)
49. Final Fantasy - Endless Nova (Amateur - PC)
50. Star Ocean Zero (Amateur - PC)

Scripters got a heart too

Yesterday, a guy from a forum annoyed me. I had the impudence of posting a little word about how it made me feel. Then someone commented on that, saying I just wanted to "prove my intellectual superiority", and "make the others feel poorly about themselves". As rude and tactless as I might be, I'm also an honest person, so I honestly asked myself:: why do I even bother posting contents and helping people in the first place? Maybe I actually do want to show off, after all.

For you to get a better understanding of my insight regarding this issue, let me tell you about this blog's history. I've written scripts for RMXP for several years now. My Ruby skills have improved a lot in the process (and still is), so there are some of them I've simply abandoned, others I've not completed yet. At first I just wanted to use them for my own projects. I believed sharing them would only result in people downloading them and not even saying thank you. Then I subscribed to a French game-making board thinking: why not just discuss this hobby of mine and share thoughts about it? And that changed my mind, because I realized discussing scripts and helping people with their issues gave me the courage to write even more scripts and excel myself. I realized that the day I wrote the Animated Custom Menu System's very first version - because this was the first time I had written a full system for someone else.

So I started to consider sharing my other works. I must admit I was pretty reluctant. What if people stole them and claimed them as their own? What if people didn't like them or otherwise didn't give a damn? And most importantly, since the point was for me to keep encouraged in exchange for the time and energy I'd spent, what if people just grabbed what they could and never provide any feedback? Well, I wasn't quite wrong about that last point, since virtually nobody has ever commented on my works unless they had something to request - and the bigger the request, the more praise they felt they had to provide. Anyways, I decided to do it, and here we are.

Now you know why my works are free and why my help is free - you actually give me something in return, in the form of positive human energy, which keeps me going and allows me to provide even more quality contents. In short, the price for a work of mine is a "thank you" - and most people don't even bother to pay that.

So it really does hurt when I'm told I think too highly of myself and I just want to make people feel bad. This was the kind of issues I wished to avoid at the time I didn't want to go on the Internet. Maybe I should just tell people who ask for support they should learn Ruby just like I did, after all no one's ever helped me in the process but online documentation. Maybe I should retire, maybe writing scripts for RMXP, even more than sharing them, is a waste of time.

So, as a conclusion, I still don't know what will become of this blog, and of my involvement with game-making communities. My only certainty is that I'm feeling very bad about it right now.

Why I hate RPGs

You might think this is funny from someone whose hobby is to write scripts to enhance a RPG maker engine. But it's actually for that very reason I do this, and it's a fact - I can't stand the RPG genre. To make this statement a little less blunt and some more interesting, let me explain you why...

History

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I'm sort of a dinosaur in the world of video games. I was born in the 80's, and I spent a very long time without a gaming console, nor even a PC - just old computers, with old video games (and when I say old, I mean older than pretty much anything you'd have in mind), and RPG came only very late in my life. At the time, there were no real genres - since the games were lacking on the multimedia side, they had to be interesting, and quite unique, if they were to catch your eye. Rather, they were roughly categorized into action/arcade, puzzle, strategy and "adventure". This last category could have held RPGs as we know them today, if there was only any chance that they could have developed at that time. The "adventure" category was further roughly divided into two styles - humourous, puzzle-like adventure games (think LucasArts's Monkey Island), and serious role-playing video games (which should be the ones to deserve the title of RPG, but which I refer to as "RPG-ancestors" to avoid confusion).

So, it all started with those "RPG-ancestors". Historically, they would be videogame adaptations of classical "pen-and-paper" role-playing games (think Dungeons & Dragons), and as such, would present the player with incredibly rich and detailed worlds, and countless possibilities. Just like a PnP role-player, you were thrown into a full-scaled universe with lots of place to visit and lots of people to talk to - and more importantly, no one sticking out to tell you what to do, or stop you if you would try and go somewhere while that was not the time yet. Though appreciated by fans, this extreme freedom would sadly overwhelm the newcomer, and make these very complex games, which required weeks of experimentation before they could be enjoyed to their fullest. For this reason, "RPG-ancestors" were particularily geeky games.

Then, one day, there was Final Fantasy.

Upon its release, Final Fantasy was kind of a UFO among "adventure games". It was neither puzzle-like, nor hardcore-roleplaying-game-like. Actually, there was pretty much nothing to do other than follow NPC's instructions who told you where to go and what to do, just a few battles here and there to keep the player interested. For the first time in videogame history, you could enjoy an epic adventure without even thinking about it. So you can only imagine how it soon became a hit.

And thus, Final Fantasy started a long-lasting tradition of brainless adventures, where you just have to sit and enjoy, and occasionally bash a few buttons to take down overpowered enemies. This is what we call RPG nowadays, and this is what I've come to dislike more than any other kind of videogames.

RPGs have you do anything but roleplay

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"Role-playing games" is an usurped title for this generation of videogames. A game would be called "role-playing" provided the roleplaying aspect makes any difference, wouldn't it? Roleplaying means speaking in place of the character, it means taking decisions for him, and that implies being given the opportunity to do so. Where in a classical RPG do you take any decisions, even regarding what to say to NPCs? And by that, I mean real decisions, some which have an influence, make any difference in the game's unfolding - dummy choices are just a joke, you could program some in Pong and it wouldn't make it a RPG, now would it? The "roleplaying" part is limited to moving the main character and make choices about his equipment, and whether he should attack or drink a potion in battle. If this is enough for a role-playing game, then it makes Doom a RPG (and a much more thrilling one, by the way).

Non-interactive storylines

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Considering you don't do anything except fight endlessly, it's only natural that whatever you may do has no influence whatsoever on the way the storyline is going to unfold. A few RPGs offer multiple endings (and by multiple I mean just 2 or 3), but it's often not even about important choices in the storyline's perspective - rather, you get another ending because you've chosen this character to join your party over that one, or because you haven't completed some obscure sidequest. The very word "storyline" says it all - we don't even start to think about making scenari something else than a dull, flat line. I'm struck by how we have incredibly sophisticated ways of rendering stunning graphics, and how much passion and energy is put into putting together breathtaking music that matches the game's atmosphere perfectly, whereas we still stick to prehistoric, extremely linear scenari. Even "choose your adventure" books offer the player more interactivity than modern RPGs, whereas their concept is half a century old. I shall discuss leads regarding how to create really interactive storylines in later posts.

It's all about battles

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Remove battles from a RPG, and it's not even a game anymore. No battles means no equipment, no treasure hunt, no leveling-up, no random encounter and thus no purpose in wandering around to ultimately get and advance the storyline. Without battles, RPGs are mere movies. Refering to my previous statement, a better title for RPGs would be "battling games", since all you really do as a sentient being, able to make decisions is battle. Now, some RPGs do have interesting batttle systems, but most of them are just about attacking absent-mindedly. Take the RPG Maker series, which is supposed to be representative of what your standard RPG would be. Honestly, the standard battle systems they feature are so dumb they make me wonder why I quit playing Soulcalibur.

It's just a matter of optimization

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Battle could be interesting, and "role-playing-like" if there were even multiple strategies to be developped. For instance, I took some interest in Pokémon for the fact that you can choose your style in some extent (even though it all boils down to dealing the most damage in the end). But most of the time, as for the storyline, there's one and only way to go. When you get the latest weapons in the game, you have to equip them since they're more powerful than the previous ones, there's no considering them a option, you would be stupid not to equip them. Once again, you're not given a real choice, even regarding as basic an option as what kind of items to equip. Regarding how your characters progress, it's just the same - they can only level up, they won't lose abilities they don't use out of lack of training. And since they have classes that prevent them for learning abilities or using weapons that are not meant for them, there's nothing to be pondered, just go and gain XP and money.

Conclusion

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I think most people enjoy RPGs for their inherent simplicity. As stated above, Final Fantasy met success because it was so simple compared to what existed at the time. I can understand that games which require much thinking and involvement can be a hassle, and to be honest I easily get tired with them as well - however, I think there's a happy medium between being required to manage tons of environmental variables at once, and being given no option at all. I make my best to give RPG Maker XP new dimensions with my scripts. I try to cross-breed RPGs with old-school adventure games, allow them to exhibit a puzzle-like aspect, and in a general manner, give the player's choices more consideration. I hope someday I can make a heavily decision-based game which is easy and entertaining to play, but difficult to get to the best end, to demonstrate my point. And then, I'll consider classical RPGs finally outdated, in a gameplay perspective.