Doki Doki Literature Club – Secrets Guide

Don’t read this until you’ve finished the game and had the true literature club experience! This is a guide for players who are looking to see everything they missed the first time. Contains spoilers and won’t help first time players.

Other DDLC Guides:

Introduction

So, hopefully you’ve had the Literature Club experience by this point. You haven’t seen everything until the end credits roll, so make sure you’ve gotten that far before reading this. If not, turn back now–this guide won’t be of much interest to you. It won’t help you and won’t make much sense. Contains spoilers, of course.

Are we ready for this?

This is a guide to finding little things that you may have missed. To see all the dialogue, a special ending, and other events of interest. It also explains a little bit of how things work, but won’t be very specific on most details so you can experience them for yourself.

It covers every major secret that exists inside the game, but may have a few minor omissions. It doesn’t tell you how to get all of the CGs, what to do when you have choices to make, or how to progress through the game.

Secret Messages

Throughout parts of the game, there will be little files created in the game folder that you can open and look at. These get deleted later on, so it’s a good idea to keep the game folder open if you want to see them. The first of these is an image file created on the morning of the festival. After that, there will be some text files created, with messages presumably from Monika.

You may remember a scene where you see an error message on the screen that an exception has occurred. It actually creates a real error report file in the game folder which will contain a bit of dialogue, also from Monika.

The character files and some other messages are codes containing interesting things when deciphered, but if you want to learn more about that, you can visit this discussion on Reddit.

Sharing Poems, Arc 1

Doki Doki Literature Club - Secrets Guide

I won’t cover how to play the poem minigame here, but based on the words you pick, each girl will either love your poem, hate it, or think it’s just okay, and there are a number of variations based on their evaluations. This is how to see all of them.

Natsuki

Day 2 (3 variations)

  • She has a different opinion about all three types of poems.

Day 3 (7 variations)

  • If she hated both of your poems, she becomes angry and refuses to share hers. If she hates just this one, she will act disappointed in you. 
  • If your poem is okay, she will compare it to your previous one, with three separate dialogues.
  • If she loved both of your poems, she becomes embarrassed, and eventually wants to keep it. If she only loved this one, she will tell you how she had low expectations for you before.

Day 4 (7 variations)

  • If she hated both of your previous poems, she won’t talk to you or share her poem no matter what you write. Otherwise, if you write a bad poem, she has two different dialogues based on whether she hated one of your previous poems or not.
  • If your poem is okay, she compares it to yesterday’s. If yesterday’s was also okay, she says that, otherwise she just says she doesn’t hate it.
  • If she loved all three of her poems, you get her dialogue leading up to her special poem for you. If you’ve never written one that she loved up to this point (unless she hated both), she has dialogue expressing her surprise.

Yuri

Day 2 (2 variations)

  • If she loves your poem, she’ll tell you. Otherwise, she just has a hard time deciding what to say. In both cases she gives you the same writing advice.

Day 3 (6 variations)

  • If she hated both of your poems, she asks if you’re mad at her and won’t show you her poem. If she just hated this one, she asks about whether you are influenced by Natsuki and Sayori.
  • If your poem is okay, she will either compare it to yesterday as an improvement, or tell you it’s pretty good.
  • If she loves your poem, she has two sets of dialogue that are almost identical except for one line about how she feels appreciated.

Day 4 (6 variations)

  • If she hated your last two poems she won’t talk to you no matter what. If she just hated one of your previous poems and hates this one, she’ll get upset and won’t show you her poem. 
  • If this is your first time giving her a poem that she hates, she remarks about how you decided to try something different. She does this also if she loved both your previous poems and you gave her one that was merely okay.
  • If you give her a poem that’s okay and she didn’t love both of them, she remarks on your improvement.
  • If you give her a poem she loves, she has two different dialogues depending on whether she loved both of your previous ones or not.

Sayori

Day 2 (3 variations)

  • She has separate dialogue for each type of poem.

Day 3 (6 variations)

  • If you write a poem she hates, she has one dialogue where she talks about liking happy and sad things.
  • If your poem is okay, she compares it to yesterday’s, with three dialogues.
  • If she loves both of your poems, she talks about you writing it for her, otherwise, she says it’s better than yesterday’s.

Day 4 (2 variations)

  • If she loves all three of your poems, she talks about you giving her all the attention, otherwise she accuses you of writing your poem for one of the other girls.

Monika

  • Monika has 9 dialogues. You can see them all by writing a poem for the same girl three days in a row, for each of the other girls.

Sharing Poems, Arc 2

Doki Doki Literature Club - Secrets Guide

The second day is basically the same as the first arc. There is a random event related to Natsuki (see random events below).

Natsuki

Day 3 (5 variations)

  • If she hated both of your poems, she become even more upset than she did in the first arc. If she just hated this one, she only acts disappointed.
  • If you write a poem she loves or one that’s okay, she considers the poem just okay. She responds in three different ways depending on your previous poem. However, if you wrote a poem she (secretly) loved, she will follow up by becoming upset that you didn’t spend time with her, and you will see the Natsuki ghost scene.

Day 4 (6 variations)

  • If you write a poem she hates, she responds in three different ways depending on whether she hated both, one, or none of your previous poems.
  • Again, she will only consider your poem okay at best in her dialogue. If she hated both your previous poems, she responds as though she hates this one too. Otherwise she compares it to whether she hated the previous day’s poem or not. 
  • If you gave your poem to Yuri already, she reacts in disgust.

Yuri

Day 3 (3 variations)

  • She will never hate your poem. If it was okay or bad, she awkwardly tells you how good it is.
  • If you wrote a poem she loves, she has two dialogues that are almost identical except for one line depending on her opinion of your previous poem.

Day 4

  • She always thinks your poem is wonderful no matter what. Once you show it to her, she won’t give it back, which affects Natsuki’s dialogue.

Just Monika

Monika’s dialogue follows two paths depending on who your first poem appealed to. On the second day, she makes condescending remarks about the girl who liked your poem the most. On the third day, she either greets you warmly and starts the first discussion about Yuri if on the Natsuki route, or tells you that you saw something you shouldn’t have on the Yuri route. On the fourth day, she shows a glitch poem if on the Natsuki route, or dismisses you with one line if on the Yuri route.

The glitch poem is different if you’re on Windows and in fullscreen mode.

Random Events

Doki Doki Literature Club - Secrets Guide

In the second arc of the game, there are a number of scenes that happen only some of the time. This will make every playthrough a little bit different. Here are the list of things you might see.

Special poems

The special poems you get are decided in advance for each playthrough. There are 11 of them, and 3 are chosen at random. You’ll have to play a few times before you see them all in the game.

Splash screen

You might get a different message instead of the usual “this game is not for children…” (1/4 chance). Some of these are funny.
You might also get a creepy version of the menu where the characters are in black and white (1/64 chance, once per playthrough).

First day

After Monika brings you to the classroom, you might get glitch Monika (1/3 chance)
Beginning on the first day, you might get a special classroom background with Sayori. This can change during the days at various points, too, but there’s a 1/6 chance each time.

Second day

If you wrote a poem that Natsuki hates, her eyes might pop out for a few seconds (1/3 chance).

Third day

Yuri might be broken on the screen when she appears (1/3 chance).
Natsuki might suddenly have a weird moving realistic mouth as she says several nonsense words as black text (1/4 chance).
After you get a special poem, the game screen might become red and distorted and the music will be altered to give you a sense of dizziness (1/3 chance) or you might get a special Sayori-themed mouse cursor (1/3 chance).

Fourth day

At the beginning of the day, you might see an distorted image of Sayori’s face. This has a 1/16 chance of occurring, but only if you didn’t see the Sayori eyes image during the poem minigame the previous night (see below).

Poem minigame

You might see a drawing of Sayori with scary blank eyes after you finish the poem each day (1/6 chance, once per playthrough).

End of days 2 and 3 – you might see a glitch text word (1/401 chance per word). None of the girls like these. If you click one, some weird things start to happen to the graphics and sound. There is a 1/11 chance of hearing a girl say ‘ba’ when you click on a word after this, once per playthrough.

End of day 3 – Monika sticker hops from off the bottom of the screen (1/11 chance). It still counts for whoever normally likes the word.

Ghostly Yuri sticker hops when you pick her word (1/101 chance, once per playthrough).

Second Arc Minor Details

At the end of day 3, during the poem minigame, take a look at Yuri’s sticker, particularly her arms.

On day 4, you’ll be given a choice of who to help. It’s difficult to not choose Monika, but if you manage to choose one of the others, you’ll see a special screen with Yuri’s eyes to make sure you pick Monika.

During the nice weekend with Yuri, she has 1,440 lines. They doesn’t mean anything, though there will be a long and familiar block of text in the history. If you quit the game and restart, you’ll be taken forward to the next panel of her scene.

Monika’s Room Details

She has different dialogue depending on what platform you’re playing on to tell you where the character files are. You’ll probably see the one for Steam since you’re reading this.

If you’re running either OBS or XSplit to record the game, Monika will perform a prank to scare you.

If you’re not streaming, Monika will check to see if your character’s name is different from the one on your computer. She has some dialogue if this is the case.

Monika has 54 conversation topics, though you won’t see one if you didn’t see her glitch poem by going down Natsuki’s route during the second act. You’ll see each one before they repeat, at which point, you’ll get the skip option. Try using it for a special message. She also has a message if you try to save, and several if you quit and restart.

Another Ending?

There are two basic endings to the game that depend on whether you’ve seen all of the CGs or not, but there is another, depressing way you can end your game.

If you’ve started a new game, but haven’t reached the part where you enter Sayori’s room the second time, deleting Sayori’s character file will make the game end in static as soon as it starts up, then a sad picture and text appear.

Starting a new game with Monika’s character file deleted will upset Sayori, and she will delete everyone and shut down the game, leading back to the aforementioned ending.

Save Files

Doki Doki Literature Club - Secrets Guide

You may notice that the game doesn’t store saves in its saves folder. Where they actually are depends on your platform, but should you try copying a save to protect it from deletion and then load it later on, you might just get scolded by Monika for cheating.

End

And that’s basically it! There are a few minor variations based on poem order that aren’t covered, but you should be able to find those easily.

Doki Doki Literature Club - Secrets Guide

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8013 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*