Okay, after finishing my first playthrough of a different Renpy-powered visual novel thanks to the engine's built-in text-to-speech support, I asked around for recommendations for other Renpy powered visual novels and was directed to DDLC.

Quick google later, I've found your itch.io page and head to the downloads. Didn't find a Linux download, but the Windows download kind of implies it works for Linux as well.

So I download it, unzip it, launch a full x-session, open a terminal emulator, cd to the game folder, and run the .sh script therein, same process I use to launch other Renpy games...

And nothing happens, my screen reader doesn't read any terminal output, no music starts playing, the only thing I can seem to do is alt+F4 back to the terminal, and attempts to redirect terminal output to text files to try and trouble shoot the problem just result in blank files.

So, any clue to what's going on? Did I download the wrong version? Is something corrupted perhaps(For what it's worth, du gives the size of the zip file as 222MB and the uncompressed game folder as 270MB), Does the game need more than the core Python libraries installed on my system to run? Are there any log files that should've been created that might can shed light on the situation?

I wish I could help but this is way out of my league

Small update: I've since managed to at least get the game playing what I'm assuming is title screen music and producing sound effects from key presses, but so far, the only speech I've gotten is a system message that "self-voicing disabled" attempting to toggle such. No clue if the self-voicing mode is simply failing to enable or what.

Failing any specific advice, anyone know a good place for getting help with Renpy games in general?

Don't know if it'll help, but I've copied and pasted the contents of log.txt and traceback.txt from the root of the game's directory below as they seem like the files most likely to shed light on this situation.

log.txt:

Fri Sep 20 18:01:42 2019
Linux-4.20.6-i686-with-debian-10.1
Ren'Py 6.99.12.4.2187 
Bootstrap to the start of init.init took 0.08s
Early init took 0.00s
Loader init took 0.01s
Loading error handling took 0.02s
Loading script took 0.52s
Loading persistent took 0.00s
Importing _renpysteam: ImportError('No module named _renpysteam',)
Running init code took 0.13s
Loading analysis data took 0.03s
Analyze and compile ATL took 0.06s
Index archives took 0.00s
Dump and make backups. took 0.00s
Cleaning cache took 0.00s
Making clean stores took 0.00s
DPI scale factor: 1.000000
Creating interface object took 0.07s
Cleaning stores took 0.00s
Init translation took 0.06s
Build styles took 0.01s
Load screen analysis took 0.01s
Analyze screens took 0.00s
Save screen analysis took 0.00s
Prepare screens took 0.09s
Save pyanalysis. took 0.00s
Save bytecode. took 0.00s
Running _start took 0.00s
Interface start took 0.05s
Couldn't import gl renderer:
Traceback (most recent call last):  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/display/core.py", line 1810, in make_draw    __import__(mod)
ImportError: libGLU.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Unknown renderer: gl
Total time until interface ready: 1.27078104019s

traceback.txt:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:  File "renpy/common/00start.rpy", line 188, in script call    call _gl_test  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 361, in script    $ __gl_test()  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 361, in <module>    $ __gl_test()  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 287, in _m1_00gltest__gl_test    _gl_performance_test()  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 304, in _gl_performance_test    ui.interact(suppress_underlay=True, suppress_overlay=True)
Exception: Could not set video mode.
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/bootstrap.py", line 295, in bootstrap    renpy.main.main()  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/main.py", line 487, in main    run(restart)  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/main.py", line 147, in run    renpy.execution.run_context(True)  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/execution.py", line 761, in run_context    context.run()  File "renpy/common/00start.rpy", line 188, in script call    call _gl_test  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 361, in script    $ __gl_test()  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/ast.py", line 814, in execute    renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/python.py", line 1719, in py_exec_bytecode    exec bytecode in globals, locals  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 361, in <module>    $ __gl_test()  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 287, in _m1_00gltest__gl_test    _gl_performance_test()  File "renpy/common/00gltest.rpy", line 304, in _gl_performance_test    ui.interact(suppress_underlay=True, suppress_overlay=True)  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/ui.py", line 285, in interact    rv = renpy.game.interface.interact(roll_forward=roll_forward, **kwargs)  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/display/core.py", line 2494, in interact    self.start()  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/display/core.py", line 1686, in start    self.set_mode()  File "/home/knoppix/Desktop/DDLC-1.1.1-pc/renpy/display/core.py", line 1925, in set_mode    raise Exception("Could not set video mode.")
Exception: Could not set video mode.
Linux-4.20.6-i686-with-debian-10.1
Ren'Py 6.99.12.4.2187
Doki Doki Literature Club! 1.1.1

The Renpy discord is at discord.gg/6ckxWYm
I've sent Renpy Tom a message to come look at this thread. Not sure if he can help or not though.

copy and paste this; ddlc.moe 

It will  send you to the page. (click then drag your mouse over the text)