"Welcome to the Literature Club! 💓"

[Tuxedo Prime]

It's been a hundred posts, and almost a year's worth of content -- not bad for a breakout indie game!

And it looks like the game isn't done with us yet, if Good Smile is anything to go by.

While Allspark's format doesn't allow for polling, I figured that I'd ask the board what people might want to read more of as part of the next phase:

1) Peeking deeper into each character (will include my own fanon add-ons, carefully marked),

2) Fanarts and cosplays (though some of these might end up in the bakery thread ),

3) Various mods and how they alter the plot,

4) More Katawa Shoujo please! We want all the feels!,

5) I changed my mind. We're just going to cover Monika from now on. Monika is the most worthy of our attention, and we should spend time with her. Just Monika. Just Monika. Just Monika. Just Monika.

 

[MEDdMI]

I'm fine waiting for official news/updates from the developer. Doki doki was fun (and traumatizing), but I don't feel the need to deep dive into it so much.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

So that's a vote for option 5? Hey, wait a minute, that's not what I wrote up there--

Apparently Dan's closest-to-completion project is an Amiga game, interestingly enough. I don't know if it will quite fit in here or not but we'll see.

If I figure out how to do a KS playthrough that should probably get its own thread, I have been sharing some of that game here as I view DDLC and KS as "cousin" games (being Ren'Py-coded visual novels made outside of Japan but learning hard into -- and subverting -- a lot of the typical anime/VN tropes).

Some of this discussion, I don't mind admitting, has served as a sort of typing therapy for me. Act 2 of DDLC is pretty unnerving on its own, but when the characters remind one of people that one knew and couldn't help.... well, to the best of my knowledge no-one (physically) died, thankfully. But you can see why the game might become a bit of a fixed idea.

Not my actual cache.

Anyway, thanks (again) for joining the club and spending time. Now if only tec acknowledged the club members when they show up in his thread bearing cupcakes.

If the game had been a vanilla visual novel, it likely wouldn't have been the breakout hit it was, but still, one can't help but wonder.... is happiness possible for these characters?

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

And now for something almost but not quite completely different:

An art collective called MHCSF apparently has a visual novel called Tax Heaven 3000 ready for release, in which a pink-haired young lady named Iris.... offers to help you prepare your US federal income tax return.

Was she president of the Doki Doki Math Club, one wonders?

Alas, the game was removed from Steam with no explanation, although some have theorized that giving your Social Security Number to a third party even though the game doesn't actually file for you might have been a concern.

MHCSF is still planning to release the game via other channels on April 5th.

 

[MEDdMI]

Tec will never acknowledge cheesecake unless it's something he likes. More curves, less clothes, mainstream characters...

I heard about the tax game thing. Not surprised they took it down. I would never trust a video game to file my taxes, even if the host was an ikemen instead.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Tec will never acknowledge cheesecake unless it's something he likes. More curves, less clothes, mainstream characters...

I can't claim to know his tastes well, but I had guessed that Yuri would fulfill one of those, what with her "big, beautiful posture" (to quote Reddit). Throw in the water balloon fight cosplay skit (now sadly rendered private), and she and Monika would be 2 for 3....

(Of course, we'll just leave her Act 2 behaviour out of this, even if some fans like to Flanderize her as "unstable knifu waifu".)

Honestly, though, if one stuck to "mainstream", there are so many connections one would miss out on. That, I surmise, is one of the positive lessons of Katawa Shoujo, which is why when tec declared Wednesdays to be for cosplay I started to search far and wide for those brave enough to do so. (Haven't seen a track-running Emi yet, but quite a few Hanakos.)

And on the flip side of that, DDLC's Monika should be, given her in-game backstory, The Perfect Companion. (One reason why I think she's projecting a bit in "Insanity" when she accuses her Club members of being "programmed to love you.") And yet, she's just as flawed as her classmates, superpowers or no. (Perhaps more so, when one factors in that Sayori has a chance to not go insane when given the same powers.) A cautionary lesson that living on desserts is a bad health strategy, which is why I sometimes tease tec by invoking her. (And Mighty Mollusk with the "You thought it was Skynet you had to worry about.... O kawaii koto." post.)

That being said, while "red flags" should be heeded; if damaged and flawed people were universally stayed away from, we'd all, I suspect, be lonely.

...this got deep again.

Even though I'm strictly manual paper-and-calculator, I'm a little sad that my nation-state's revenue-collecting posse hasn't inspired anyone to code up a Doki Doki Math Club! -style Quickbooks program. Perhaps no-one could think of good names for the characters. (An ikemen, eh? Now there's a doubly untapped market....)

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Spoiler: DDLC but Monika speaks Japanese to you:

The uploader requested that people not reupload this sequence of a translated Act 3 playthrough stream to other platforms. While I think that Allspark links rather than reuploads when an internal player is opened, I opted to obey the spirit of the request, so here's a link instead.

It's kind of amusing seeing a virtual avatar (one that looks like she could be Sayori's older sister, to boot) get flustered at the Space Classroom antics. Perhaps someday we'll see a full stream.

Also, we have an official fully Japanese-language title:ドキドキ文芸部 .

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

"All the girls are The Best Gi-- WAIT, NOT LIKE THAT --"

 

[MEDdMI]

GAH

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Just a picture of the club enjoying the season. Perhaps the view will inspire them to write some new poems....

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

So, in an episode of the anime "Call of the Night", the characters play some video games.

And look what one of the choices was....

Certainly, it will be a wholesome game and nothing bad will happen!

 

[MEDdMI]

They sorta look like the girls, too (minus Monika).

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

They sorta look like the girls, too (minus Monika).

There's a bit of tweaking and mix-and-matching in the character styles (the pink-haired tsundere is wearing Monika's tall black stockings, and Sayori's analogue in Sewing Club seems to have Yuri's height and... posture....)

Still, it was fun watching Reddit wonder online about how much the screen signified:
"Does Dan know about this?"
"Eh, DDLC leaned hard into stock anime/VN tropes, it'd be easy to make anything in those genres look like it...."
"But copying the interface?"
"If it's based on DDLC, where's Monika?"
"Maybe it's Act 4?"

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

And for yet more wholesomeness, here's a storytime with Monika and a "daughter" that Drechenaux has given her.

As I mentioned in the comments at the Tube of You, it makes me want to hear the story of the Sad Clockwork Girl. Perhaps Monika might not be the best one to tell it, though.

Also, I found it interesting to note that Monika mentioned Dan, and not Ive (the programmer who, per Metaverse's memos, had the bright idea of giving a dating sim character access to the scripts and command-level privileges).

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

You know, I had a feeling that Monika would be fiendishly good at Dance Dance Revolution....

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Now that we've all filed, and are waiting for assessments and returns.... the wonky algorithms of the Tube of You are revealing reviews of Tax Heaven 3000 (or as I call it, Doki Doki Math Club!).

Here's a review and playthrough that shows what the game does, and doesn't do; what the good and bad/abrupt endings are; and provides an alternate theory as to why Steam pulled the game.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Natsuki: "I'm not cute!"

Also Natsuki:

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

In which an actual tax accountant who plays visual novels breaks down the utility of Tax Heaven 3000.

The summary -- you probably shouldn't use Ren'Py to write accounting software. But considering the effort taken to do that anyway, and make a workable visual novel, the main shortcomings of the game seem to have more to do with the US tax system than anything else.

 

[MEDdMI]

Happy Father's Day....? (A bit of a spoiler as to one of the char's relationships with her dad)

Spoiler

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1670464264476454912

The plug. The plug makes this entire pic.