2017 gaming awards – App Trigger superlatives edition

Get Shorty Award – Doki Doki Literature Club!

Doki Doki Literature Club! is a rather short game. However, its three to four-hour journey requires a ton of replayability to work your way through multiple endings, as the game navigates the social dynamics of a high school boy acting as the fifth member of an all-girls creative writing and reading club.

This visual novel is very saccharine, but don’t let that fool you into thinking characters like Monika, Yuri, Sayori and Natsuki don’t have deeper conversations with the player about friendship, creativity, art and personal feelings. You need to present poems to other members of the literature club each day in order to refine your skills, with different members of your club reacting to different things you have to say. Who knows what will work for the girl you seek to please?

Doki Doki leans on its excellent writing; a necessary trait for a game of its type. Whereas other visual novels may present laborious scenarios that require heavy skipping on repeat playthroughs, the quirky, engaging story will leave you hanging on every word.

Runners-up: What Remains of Edith Finch, Lone Echo