We spoke to queer Nigerian gamers about the identities they hide online
Voice chat can mean teamwork, coordination, and banter, but for many of the queer Nigerian gamers we spoke to, the mic is a risk assessment tool.
Analysis
The monster was right
How Doki Doki Literature Club exposes dating sims as systems that punish female autonomy
9 min read
[Content warning: The following story contains discussion of suicide, self harm, and abuse.]
[Editor's note: This article contains full spoilers for Doki Doki Literature Club.]
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus dropped on iOS and Android in December 2025, bringing the cult classic to mobile for the first time since its 2017 PC release. With over 30 million downloads and eight years of cultural presence, the game remains a phenomenon — and a reckoning. While most fan discussions about the game treat Monika as the villain of the meta-horror game, what if we've been reading it wrong? What if she's not the monster? What if the dating sim structure itself is?
For the uninitiated: Doki Doki Literature Club presents itself as a typical dating sim in which you play as an unnamed, male, teenage protagonist joining a high school literature club to romance one of three girls: Sayori (the cheerful childhood friend), Yuri (the shy bookworm), or Natsuki (the feisty baker). Monika, the club president, serves initially as a guide through the game, existing outside the romance routes.
Then the game breaks. Characters glitch, the interface corrupts, and girls start dying in ways that violate dating sim logic entirely. What seemed at first like a harmless visual novel transforms into psychological horror as Monika reveals she's gained consciousness, knows she's in a game, and desperately wants the player to choose her even though the code makes that impossible.