Thirteen tracks that start as a cute dating sim soundtrack and slowly become something that makes your skin crawl. Dan Salvato's Doki Doki Literature Club upended visual novel expectations in 2017, and the vinyl release gives this deceptively small OST the physical treatment it deserves.
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You already know where this goes, but the music makes the journey hit even harder. "Ohayou Sayori!" is all sunshine and morning energy, painfully innocent in hindsight. "Dreams of Love and Literature" has this delicate piano waltz that sounds like falling for someone in a library.
Then "Poem Panic!" shows up with manic, playful anxiety, and you start noticing the cracks. "Sayo-nara" is where everything breaks, this gut-punch of a track that recontextualizes every cheerful note that came before it.
"Just Monika." is unsettling in a way that's hard to describe, this calm, knowing piano piece that plays while the game itself falls apart around you. And then "Your Reality" closes everything out with a ukulele love song sung by the character who just dismantled reality.
It's sweet, it's devastating, and it has no business making you cry after everything that happened. A masterclass in musical misdirection.