Monika will sit and talk to the player indefinitely about various topics until the player manually enters the game's directory and deletes Monika's character file. She expresses her loneliness from being relegated to a fruitless supporting role within an empty world where her only company had been "autonomous personalities" designed only to fall in love with the protagonist, and she confesses her own love not to the male protagonist character "MC", but directly to the player controlling them, regardless of their gender having failed to use coding to transfer herself into the player's computer, she instead seeks to trap them with her within the game itself. Over time, after the exaggerated suicides and erasure of the three love interests, the player learns that Monika is in fact a self-aware video game character file who has the ability to manipulate and delete other character files, which she used to alter the behavior of her club-mates in an unsuccessful bid to make them unlikable and prevent their programmed confessions of love to the protagonist. įor the first quarter of Doki Doki Literature Club!, Monika serves solely as the tutor, guiding the player through the narrative. Is that behavior justified? Does her eventual remorse and sacrifice redeem her by the end? It seems that a lot of people feel that way."ĭan Salvato on the reception of Monika. While she is technically a kind and caring person, her epiphany about her own universe had turned her into a total sociopath who laughed at the misery of her former friends. I never expected Monika to be so popular.
DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB YANDERE SKIN
Later in 2018, a computer avatar based on Monika was released to Gaia Online under the title "Just Dangerous Me", the addition of which has been criticised by Salvato due to no permission having been sought and the skin being sold as downloadable content.
DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB YANDERE SIMULATOR
On January 1, 2018, Monika and the other main characters of Doki Doki Literature Club! were added to Yandere Simulator as character skins, with Salvato's permission. She is considered one of the greatest video game characters, particularly among those created in the 2010s. Monika has been well received by critics and gamers, some of whom called her disarming, passive-aggressive, tragic, sinister and witty. The sole exception to these formats is Monika, who received an English name and speech pattern as a hint to her individual nature compared to the other characters, and the blank slate in-game protagonist "MC". The game's other stock characters were based around standard anime archetypes (such as childhood sweetheart, girl next door, tsundere and manic pixie dream girl) and were given Japanese names to emphasize a pseudo-Japanese atmosphere characteristic of Western-produced visual novel, with each character's dialogue being written as though poorly-translated from Japanese the game's title refers to the colloquial sound of a heartbeat alongside reference to a combination of book club and literature circle. In creating the game's horror elements, Salvato drew inspiration from Yume Nikki and Eversion, emphasizing to his team that he wanted the market for visual novels to become much more daring and less reliant on the same plot concepts. Discussing the creation of Monika and her abilities, Salvato explained that he was inspired by "things that are scary because they make you uncomfortable, not because they shove scary-looking things in your face." To achieve this, Salvato developed the façade of a cute setting, which would break down over time along with the behavior of the characters, and eventually the role of one evil character (Monika) who had seized control of the game from the player would be revealed. The physical appearance of Monika went through several designs, one of which featured a chibi effect. The inspiration for the character's creation extends Salvato's concept of an innocuous romance game that slowly falls apart over time as horrible things begin to happen and one girl takes control. She is apparently deleted at the end of the game, but returns to destroy the game itself. While Monika initially appears as the main tutor and supporting character of the lighthearted dating simulator Doki Doki Literature Club! that guides the player on their path to romance the three provided love interests, after being revealed to be a computer program that gained sentience, her words, actions and surroundings become increasingly malicious as she makes her intentions clear. The character was created by Dan Salvato and voiced by Jillian Ashcraft. Monika, also known as Monika.chr, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the visual novel metafictional psychological horror video game Doki Doki Literature Club!. Monika, as she appears in Doki Doki Literature Club!