Catering to a specific niche audience, visual novel video games seem to continue to thrive amidst the action-packed, graphics-intensive titles that are out in the market today. Often offering compelling storylines, unforgettable characters, and stunning artwork, some of the most highly thought-of video games are visual novels. One such popular title is Team Salvato's indie game Doki Doki Literature Club, which has recently announced that its physical release for the Nintendo Switch has been delayed for the second time.
Visual novel fans have likely heard of or played through Doki Doki Literature Club. The game experienced a surge in online popularity back when it was first released in 2017, due to it being virtually free for players to download for the PC, and because of its innocent-looking visuals. Doki Doki Literature Club's initial premise of being a cute dating sim drew in many interested gamers, but the unique plot twists within the story were what likely hooked most of the visual novel's hardcore fans. With the physical release of the title being delayed once more, Doki Doki Literature Club fans will have to wait longer to get their hands on an actual cartridge of their favored visual novel title.
On Twitter, Doki Doki Literature Club's publisher Serenity Forge made a public announcement that the physical release of the visual novel title for the Switch has been delayed once again. The publisher originally slated the physical release for July 2021, but announced in August that it was being pushed back to September 2021. Now, Serenity Forge has stated that Doki Doki Literature Club Plus premium physical editions will go on sale on October 8, 2021.
Serenity Forge's statement made it very clear that the current pandemic was one of the major factors in the delay. Not only did the lockdowns slow down the video game development industry as a whole, they also had a negative impact in aspects of manufacturing, labor, and shipping. All of these issues compounded together to make it hard for Serenity Forge to release Doki Doki Literature Club Plus at its promised time in September.
Nevertheless, with October 2021 being only a couple of weeks away, visual novel fans and physical cartridge collectors do not have to wait too long to get their hands on the game. Hopefully there will be enough copies to go around, and that the publishers were able to produce enough to satisfy the demand of the Doki Doki Literature Club fanbase.
Doki Doki Literature Club is available for the Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
