As I started spreading DDLC to more friends, I started to think deeper into the game. What was the game about and what it has achieved in my thinking and the following was what I arrived at:
Of course, I can't be sure what Team Salvato's main intention was with the game, I can only say what I felt it was.
The game shed light on teenage suicide, a problem often overlooked by our society today despite its prevalence. There are teenagers like Sayori who face depression. They seem happy in school but behind they scenes their imagination and thoughts are tearing them apart. They struggle to find a reason to go to school. These people are often overlooked by others. The game, however, shows how we can pay attention to those around us to notice if any of our friends show such signs like our player did with Sayori. The game's ability to make us have such a close bond with Sayori before cruelly snatching her away from us also allows us to feel, to a certain extent, how it's like to lose a close friend. This appeal to feelings allows for an even more effective call for action, for all of us to pay attention to those around us, especially teenagers as majority of the target audience for the game IS teenagers. Teenagers today ARE facing immense pressure from school and interpersonal relations especially while many are still developing their emotional capacity, I feel this is important and the game has done fantastically in doing so.
Apart from this, the game also sheds light on elements of love. Initially, Monika used underhand means of deleting all other girls to force you to be with her. This plan clearly didn't prove successful as even so you didn't want to be with her. It shows the pains of forced love and how it's not worthwhile and will never work out. However, further on in the game, when the song plays, Monika realises this saying "If I don't know how to love you, I'll leave you be", showing how she realised sometimes you need to let others go instead of forcing it. I thought of the "Your reality| song as depicting two people from different worlds, thus living in different "realities". They understand and look at things differently, and in the end this failed to work out due to their many differences.
To the more superficial level, as someone who likes literature, the game also shows how different people lean towards different genres of literature and instead of disliking other genres, we should learn to embrace them. This not only applies to literature but many other aspects of life also.
Of course, all these lessons go deeper than I have mentioned, mixed together with the great plot and game concept as well as romances that make my heart flutter, I truly loved this game. Another disclaimer that this is just my views and some of them might be wrong or not the creators' original intentions.