10 Video Games That Completely Switched Genre Halfway Through
6. Doki Doki Literature Club!
From appearances alone, Doki Doki Literature Club! is a cute visual novel in which the protagonist is tasked with romancing one of the titular club's several available young ladies.
And that's certainly the vibe of the game's first half: a relaxing, low-key experience that doesn't demand too much from the player.
But then at almost exactly the game's 50% mark, one of the girls, Sayori, commits suicide by hanging, and the player is promptly kicked out of the game with their existing save being deleted.
Restarting the game sees events play out again without Sayori, who the other characters don't even remember, as the vibe slides ever uneasily into outright horror territory.
The visuals periodically distort and text becomes unreadable, and one of the other girls, Yuri, fatally stabs herself in the chest, forcing the player to watch her decompose over the following days.
From here things get even more wild and meta, as players find themselves facing off against an antagonist who is acutely aware that she's in a video game, and rather unhappy that she's a supporting character rather than a viable romance option. What a wild ride.