Both Doki Doki Literature Club Plus Ends Explained (In Detail)

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus is a captivating mix between a horror game and a visual novel, tricking unsuspecting players into believing it’s a dating simulator before plunging into a much darker story, and its multiple endings follow with their own surprises. However, as usual with visual novels, the core gameplay revolves around dialogue options, the right combinations of which are key to achieving one of the three endings.

[Warning – major plot spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club Plus follow.]

in Doki Doki Literature Club PlusThe player’s character joins a school club, meeting a handful of seemingly nice girls to be friends and potentially date. As time goes on, The girls discover darker aspects of themselvesincluding suicidal thoughts and possessive tendencies, and the game often breaks the fourth wall by “ending“And send the player back to the main menu, showing”Deleted“and”Corrupted“Save files.

In a game that goes out of its way to be tricky and obfuscate concepts and elements of its characters, How exactly do dialogue options influence the endings of the game, and what do the endings mean? The ending that most will see is generally considered the “Normal” ending for the game, although the other two are more similar to a traditional “good” or “bad” ending, although the core premises for all are relatively the same with only a few minor tweaks.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus’ normal ending, explained

Monica deletes the game

again, DDLC+The normal ending is easiest to achieveAs the player does not have to do anything special to do this. All they have to do is play the entire game as normal, without reloading their save files and retaining all the different options in Act One. They can play through DDLC‘s poetry-writing sessions up to two times each, as long as they do not replay each one three times. Then, when you have the choice to spend the weekend with Yuri or Natsuki, choose one, and don’t reload the save to try the other.

Later in the play, Monica reveals that she has become extremely self-aware: in essence, She knows she is a character in a video game, and has learned how to edit the game’s files to get her way. Jealous of the other girls in the club, she erases them from existence. The player will be trapped in a circus conversation with Monika until they navigate to the in-game operating system and delete Monika’s files from the game.

In the normal end, Sayori comes out and thanks the player for deleting Monika. In Monica’s absence, Sayori takes over as club president. however, She immediately becomes self-aware just like Monica. She starts making threats to the player until Monica suddenly reappears. She deletes Sayori, and then the entire game to spare others the burden of self-awareness. The player will then receive a letter from Monica, in which she describes her realization of how miserable self-awareness makes people.

The Bad End of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, explained

Deleting Monica early

To get the bad ending, the player needs to delete Monika’s character file as soon as possibleBut it’s not really worth it considering it stops the whole game in its tracks. Still, if the player wants to see every ending possible, this is probably the easiest one, as it can be attempted from almost any point in the game.

If Monica is deleted before starting a new game, Sayori becomes self-aware immediatelyMuch like she also does in the game’s normal ending. However, she appears to be in excruciating pain, shouting”please make it stop,” before deleting every other character file. Loading the game after this will only show a dirty scene of Sayori hanging herself. Progression after this is impossible without reset Doki Doki Literature Club Plus.

If the player remains on Sayori’s death screen for ten minutes, a message will appear on the screen in Sayori’s handwriting: “Now everyone can be happy.“This seems to mean that Sayori came to the same realization as Monika in the normal ending: that self-knowledge is a curse. Much like Monica, she deleted the entire game to spare the other girls the same fate.

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus’ good ending, explained

100% completion

For a good ending, the game must be 100% completedWhich involves messing around with save files. In short, the player will need to choose all three options in all three song-writing sequences, loading the save between each. They will need to spend a weekend with Yuri, then reload the save and spend it with Natsuki, and confess their love for Sayori at the end of it all.

After doing this, things will continue as normal, and the initial scenes of the ending resemble the “Normal“Fine. But, Instead of trying to attack the players, Sayori thanks them for trying to bring happiness to everyone in the club. She still deletes the remaining files to prevent anyone else from suffering, but instead of a letter from Monica at the end, there’s a letter from developer Dan Salvato thanking the player for taking the time to reach out. Doki Doki Literature Club’s Special ending.

The last letter also described Salvato’s reasons for developing the game: Motivated by his interest in unconventional storytelling, he sought to create a game that explored the empathy that dating sim players often have for fictional characters. By donating the girls in DDLC+ Self-awareness, they effectively become real people in the narrative. This is the existential problem Doki Doki Literature Club A horror masterpiece, and players must actually experience all three endings to realize the implications.