Doki Doki Literature Club gets a brand new expanded “Plus” version for PC and console

Ah, Doki Doki Literature Club. A delightful story about a young, bright-eyed high-school student and his childhood friend. A tale of cute girls writing poems. And a chance to spend some virtual time with the one and only Monika. Just Monika.

Yes, the world’s most notorious after-school club is back in an all-new version: Dan Salvato’s modern psychological horror classic Doki Doki Literature Club has evolved and, with the assistance of Serenity Forge, become Doki Doki Literature Club Plus. This is an enhanced version of the game that will be available not only for its original platform of PC (via both Steam and the Epic Games Store) but it also marks the first time the game is coming to consoles: specifically, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox platforms and Nintendo Switch.

And it’s coming pretty soon, too — Monika (and those other girls too, I guess) will be back on our screens later this summer, in both digital and physical form.

Revealed during the IGN Expo livestream, part of IGN’s Summer of Gaming event, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus features a number of additions and enhancements over the original freeware PC version. For starters, all the artwork has been properly upscaled to 1080p, so it should look great even on the largest modern displays.

On top of that, there are 13 additional music tracks on top of the original’s catchy tunes, including some new vocal tracks. You’ll have the opportunity to listen to any of them as much as you want through the in-game music player, and you can even set up a playlist of your favourites or loop one over and over.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus

But probably the most intriguing thing about this new release is that there are six new side stories. These promise a significant amount of brand new narrative content, meaning that even veterans of the PC original will find something new to enjoy here.

The teaser image shows Sayori comforting a distraught Yuri, and the text promises the opportunity to “learn about the origins of the Literature Club”. Judging from what little we’ve seen of the game’s interface so far, it appears that they will act as self-contained chapters that are separate from the main story rather than being integrated into the central narrative. Presumably they will be “prequels” of a sort, allowing us to get to know main characters Sayori, Yuri, Natsuki and Monika a bit better.

According to creator Dan Salvato, the side stories will be “tales of friendship and literature”, and each will focus on a pair of characters and how they got to know each other in the first place. The Side Stories feature new artwork drawn by LucidSky and SquChan, with backgrounds by Velinquent and music by Varien.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus

One question that veterans of the original Doki Doki Literature Club may have is how the new version will be handling the sections that involve Alt-Tabbing out of the game and digging around in the files. Without spoiling matters for those who are yet to play Doki Doki Literature Club, there is a surprising amount of “hidden” content buried in the directory the game is installed to — and this updates as the game progresses. Since consoles do not have a file manager like Windows Explorer, how will this work for them?

Again, we’re going primarily off the little of the interface we’ve seen so far, but it appears that the game’s main menu has been redesigned to resemble a fake operating system, with a Windows-style “Start menu” popping open to reveal options to play the main story, explore the side stories, view pictures, play music and change settings. But there are two intriguing additional options in here: “Files” and “Mail”. I suspect we’ve found our answer — presumably the “Files” option is for the occasions you need to… err, manipulate files, and the “Mail” option takes the place of the text files that appeared in the game’s directory on the original PC release. We shall see.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus

For those who are yet to experience Doki Doki Literature Club for themselves — especially those who haven’t even been spoiled by watching Let’s Plays or streams of the game — Doki Doki Literature Club Plus is set to be the definitive edition of this modern classic, and an ideal way into one of the most notorious, fascinating games of the last decade.

For veterans of the game, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus provides a long-awaited means of celebrating your love for Monika (just Monika) with a lovely physical edition.

Available for PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch (sorry, PC and Xbox owners!), the physical release of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus includes a copy of the game, four two-inch character standees, a set of stickers, a membership card for the Literature Club, a special poem written by Monika herself, and a download for the full soundtrack, printed on a floppy disk-shaped card. The Nintendo Switch version also comes with a poem notebook inner coversheet, for those who like their games to look nice on the inside as well as the outside.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus releases for PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox platforms later this summer.

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Pete Davison
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