Doki Doki Literature Club!

It was made by Dan Salvato, previously known for Super Smash Bros. mods. He couldn't draw, so he built the first versions of the girls in a free online anime character creator, and the final sprites were drawn by freelance artist Satchely.

Salvato wanted to scare people with what makes them uncomfortable rather than with scary pictures. Reviewers wrote that the horror grows out of losing control over the game. In the original, you have to dig into its files to move on.

The game came out for free in September 2017. It was downloaded more than a million times in its first three months, and a month later the count passed two million.

Critics praised the horror and the unusual form, though one reviewer found clicking through flirty chats about poetry a slog. Players leave 96% positive out of 230,005 reviews, and critics give it 78 on Metacritic. In our Recommended Score it ranks 529 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!, the expanded edition with six side stories about how the girls became friends, and NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, where you spend a month guiding a streamer toward a million followers.