8 Video Games EVERYONE Got Obsessed With

4. Doki Doki Literature Club!

Doki Doki Literature Club! was released in 2017 and quickly became a gateway drug for visual novels, both because it happened to be very, very good, and was released for free by developer Team Salvato.

But being free-to-play alone wouldn't have been enough to turn a cutesy dating sim into a viral smash - it was the fact that Doki Doki Literature Club! took a hard mid-game pivot into meta horror territory.

As players discovered this, word-of-mouth spread quickly that it was a game everyone had to play, as the press and players alike tried - and, often, failed - to avoid spoiling its big surprises.

Between the number of high-profile streamers that played the game, its place in meme culture, and the abundance of fan-made mods, Doki Doki Literature Club! became a surprise pop-culture phenom in its own right, and to date has more than 200,000 reviews on Steam.

That the game still consistently boasts over 500 concurrent players on the platform despite being eight years old and a mere four-hour visual novel is nothing short of astonishing.