Recent reviews by Novice

I got recommended to play this game by a couple of friends and at first, I wasn't really into it. I saw a bit of gameplay on YouTube about it and I understood the basic concept of it: Explore a diverse range of planets and every time you die, a mysterious mask statue thing seemingly records the progress you make. The goal of the game being to make heads or tails about what is actually going on inside this carefully crafted solar system.

An hour into the game, after already dying a couple of times, I arrived on the landing pad on a secluded island, entranced by the stormy weather and the rapid waves. I attempted to make my way to the other side of the island, only to get swept up by a random tornado, causing me to fall headfirst into a random boulder on the island, effectively ending my attempt then and there. I figured that at this point, I was gonna take a 'break' from the game, only to never get around to playing it again, only to get convinced once again by a friend that this game was indeed worth experiencing to the end. So I once again delved back into the Outer Wilds and really gave it a good few hours to see if it was something I was going to like long-term.

28 hours in and well, to put it simply, it was awesome! The game does a really good job of keeping you intrigued and eager to discover its many secrets and mysteries. I will argue that the ship log is the most important tool that I came to use over time. I am someone that needs at least SOME sense of direction or goal provided by the game in order for me to keep investing time into it. Thankfully, the ship log has a rumor system, displayed like an inter-connected flowchart that shows the most relevant information about each location and important entity you come across. It also tells you which areas you need to explore more of, but doesn't get anymore specific than that, leaving you with enough ambiguity to connect the dots yourself while at the same time, not leaving you completely in the dark either.

Over time, the controls became very natural... albeit I never really learnt when to start decelerating my ship before colliding into a planet as fast as a supernova haha, but thankfully, the auto-piloting system assists with things like this, so it didn't happen too often. I had no issues with piloting the ship and the character that I was controlling and any mistake that I made felt like it was entirely my fault. One thing to note is that the developers make it clear that a gamepad is recommended for this game, which I was using the entire time I was playing.

Overall, I had a great time with this game. I would like to say a lot more about my experiences, but that may be too much for a Steam Review, and it's best to avoid any spoilers for this game anyway. I may not have gotten nearly as emotionally attached as my peers to this game, but it was certainly a worthwhile experience that I could easily recommend to a newcomer, even to those that may not typically like games that are focused on exploration.

I've always been a huge fan of visual novels and Doki Doki Literature Club is definitely up there being one of my favourites. Unfortunately, many of the surprises and twists that I once had strong reactions to, just fell flat even years after playing the original release. This is by no means the game's fault, but I think people who are considering playing through this again should keep in mind that apart from the additional content (e.g side stories, in-game desktop and more lore), the main game is exactly the same. The side stories are nice and give the cast more characterisation. The additional lore is also interesting to discover so there's that for returning fans. One thing I did appreciate about this release is how it encourages you to see and find all of the secrets with its achievements and picture gallery. I did end up having to use a guide however as some achievements are quite obscure and pretty much impossible to find by yourself. So I'd say for newcomers to Doki Doki Literature Club, this is overall the definitive version of the game and I highly recommend it. For returning players, I'd say that there isn't much of a reason to go back unless you're feeling nostalgic and are absolutely craving for more characterisation and lore.

(This review is now revised): It definitely is still too early in development for me to really recommend it to everyone. As of now, I'd only recommend this game to hardcore fans of the Project Diva series. This game steals a lot of gameplay mechanics from the Project Diva games like F2nd and Future Tone and essentially creates a sandbox based on those mechanics for the community to play and create custom charts with using the Editor There are still some bugs and design quirks currently, and not a lot of Project Heartbeat charts from the community. You can use charts from PPD which is a very niche game similar to this and the support for these charts is good. The potential that this game has is great, and I would love to see this game and its community grow exponentially.

This is a very excellent game although I feel as though it takes far too long to get into the meat of things...

It's really fun, especially with all the mods that are out there