Don't take it personally is a visual novel, or interactive fiction game where the majority of the story is told through still images of the speaking characters in front of anime-style backgrounds with text overlaid.

At these points, the player is presented with two or three choices for what the teacher says; which option is chosen can change what path the plot takes, in either a minor or major way.

[1] In a departure from most visual novels the player can also see, at any time, the equivalent of texts and Facebook postings between the students on a school social network called AmieConnect (often shortened to "Amie"), as well as conversation threads on a 4chan-like imageboard that serve as foreshadowing for future plot points.

[3] The students in his class are Arianna Belle-Essai, Kendall Flowers, Taylor Gibson, Charlotte Grewal, Isabella Hart, Nolan Striukas, and Akira Yamazaki.

Through Amie texts and wall posts, the other students insinuate that she committed suicide,[11] and the school administration tells Rook that they cannot provide him with any contact information for her.

[12] Class continues without her, and a little while later Arianna, if the player rejected her earlier in the game, makes another attempt to have a relationship with Rook.

Upset by these occurrences, when Akira's mother asks to speak to him concerning misuses of Amie, he assumes that she has found out that he is spying on the students' conversations.

[16] When he meets her, he finds that Isabella is alive and had simply moved away; the students made it look like she was dead via Amie as a prank that got out of control.

Furthermore, they already knew that he could see their messages; Akira's mother explains that the students have no idea of online privacy, having always had technology like Amie, and assumed that anything they put online—even "private" messages—might be read by anyone.

[1] He praised Love's ability to use dialogue to effect an emotional response, though he noted that the game seemed to lose some of its impact in the final chapters and felt that the use of the "12chan" threads as a Greek chorus was "perhaps a meta-layer too far".

[25] Emily Short of Gamasutra, in a discussion about the game, said that it was definitely worth playing and full of "charming characters, colorful dialogue, and important questions", but criticized the uneven exploration of issues regarding privacy versus personal boundaries.