You know what? I give up. Social interaction has never been my strong suit, but I’d always been able to muddle through it with enough practice and an arsenal of memorised scripts. Romance, though? That sense of being able not only to muddle my way through an interaction, but to make someone else happy and feeling valued at the end of it? That’s nigh impossible, and I don’t understand. I don’t know what prospective partners want from me, and I’m done trying to figure it out.

But okay. Isn’t this what dating simulators are supposed to do? Give a taste of what it is to date? Provide a space to practice romance? To dream of relationships that are never going to happen? If there was ever a space to learn how to talk to a prospective partner and what scripts I should build, it’s there, right?

Right?

I’ll be blunt. I hate dating sims. They’re down there with platformers and fighting games as some of my least favourite games. I hate them because, at the point when I’m delicately popping my chocolate-covered fingers into a busty girl’s mouth and feeling her breathe heavily against my neck, each breath a soft promise that there will be a next one and a next one and a next one until the breaths turn into soft brush against the small hairs at the nape of my neck, I don’t get it. I don’t see the appeal. Or, I suppose, I see the appeal, but I don’t feel the appeal. It’s just text from a being that doesn’t exist trying to convince me to feel something I don’t. And the gameplay wants me to chase after these characters? To convince them they want me as their husbando? But why?

I don’t understand romance. I don’t understand what it does for people, and I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do for me. It just feels voyeuristic and exploitative, like people created solely for my pleasure and titillation, to be discarded as soon as I’m done with their antics and want something else from my life. But I try. I play games to try and feel and experience something I don’t usually, and so I load up a dating sim to see if it might help me understand what it is I’m missing.

And you know what? Doki Doki Literature Club might actually be the dating sim that teaches me a bit about romance. There are things in here I do understand, scripts I can learn from, elements that can help me grow as a human being. I can use some of the lessons from Doki Doki and maybe ease some of that tension in the endless barrage of failed social interactions.

Love...is...internet. Got it!

Each of these characters can teach me something about what “attractive” or “desirable” or “waifu-material” means. Wear short skirts. Stuff my breasts. Have a posture that can only be described as “right angled.” Love is cupcakes and chocolates and creeping obsession and wide, staring eyes. Love is unrivalled, unassailed, and unquestionable. Also sometimes weird and inexplicable? The characters in this game do some weird things sometimes. But I suppose that’s just how romance works. The big romantic gestures, viewed by someone unfamiliar with them, might seem a little weird. I imagine that, the more I practice them, the easier and less weird they’ll get.

But if I want people to like me, for the gum in the social works to clear and the hearts to flow from their eyes, it’s games like Doki Doki I should be learning from. Dating sims. Pretty girls and cute interactions blossoming into romance. That’s the purpose of a game, right? To give space to explore something we’re not?

And I am not the romantic the game wants me to be, but I can start. I can give it a shot. I can try.

I’ll start by sidling in really close, book held just so, and waiting for them all to see

Me.

Not the others. I’d like them to just see

Me.

Developer: Team Salvato
Genre: Dating Sim, Horror
Year: 2017
Country: United States
Language: English
Time to complete: 3-4 hours
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/Bdaj7oqWOx8