Gameplay Journal #6

The video game glitch I want to focus on is the glitch feature in the game Doki Doki Literature Club. My past entries have been focused on unintentional glitches but I think this is really interesting because the glitches are placed intentionally to enhance the gameplay experience. The game before the glitches existed was very lighthearted and cute with some warning signs here or there but nothing really to be concerned about. But then after a certain event glitches start appearing. A glitch in the music here, a glitch in the character model there, and because of that it progressively makes the game a lot more creepy and horrific.

It reconfigured the player’s normal experience by interrupting the norms of a visual novel game and extended it even deeper. It began to corrupt the music, character models, and even the game files themselves. This helped the gameplay experience as it started “revealing and forging glitch artefacts as a critical strategy.” (Ferreira, 113) As a player you start to question what the true intention of the game is. It becomes almost like a new genre of game in itself and from then on it becomes a game of discovery and question.

Sources:

Ferreira, Pedro, and Luisa Ribas. XCoAx 2020: Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary … 2020.xcoax.org/pdf/xCoAx2020-Ferreira.pdf.

Lets Play: https://youtu.be/rQyd5B77a88