Highlights from the 2024 Queer Games Bundle
The Editors of GwG
When you look at the 2024 Queer Games Bundle, it might appear overwhelming–in a good way! It’s a pretty full selection: 271 contributors, 489 items. A couple years ago, now-bundle organizer and friend of the site Caroline Delbert interviewed a bunch of contributors. We applaud that effort, but can’t match it. Instead, please join several of our editors on a random and detour-heavy walk through the bundle. There are many, many games worth encountering in this bundle, and these are just a few of the ones that caught our eye. As of the date of publishing, you’ve got about four more days to check out this fantastic collection, which includes everything from zines to puzzles to fighting games to music to asset packs. Right now, they’re at 99% of their fundraising goal–let’s see if we can help get them over the finish line in these final few days.
For a quick bit of puzzle gaming…
Currents
I enjoy the experiments that game designers have been conducting using Godot, a free and open source game engine. Currents is one of those and the result is a pleasantly surprising and calm puzzle game.
The goal is to get a boat (or multiple boats) from one lighthouse to another over the open seas. You can't steer them directly, but you can push them along by drawing directional lines - currents! - from one edge of the board to the other. Obstacles come in the form of rocks, whirlpools, pirate ships, and those other boats.
While a par-system is… er… par for the course in games like this, I found it to be effective. It functioned as simple encouragement to shape the fewest currents that would move boats around obstacles and to their destinations. That led me to some creative thinking about momentum, which I haven’t seen implemented as well in Godot before. It’s nothing too complex, but there’s just enough for there to be more than meets the eye at first.
For a nibble of story…
com__et
Dev SuperBiasedGary's use of multiple endings to dramatize a process of self-realization and overcoming self-denial comes through loud and clear. I like the game as a very direct metaphor for how a conflicted character might think through a scene, over and over, until they figure out what they really want. The first time through the story does a good job of setting that up, including some creative use of text placement and spacing. Don’t you want to know what’s in those omitted, transparent parts of the sentences? Don’t you want to see if you can unlock those grayed-out, unselectable options for action and dialog? The true ending is sweet and provides closure on the theme, although I was left wanting just one more trip through...
Hitme 2
Last year, on our podcast with Caroline and Taylor McCue, I revealed that I had played the first but not the second chapter of Hitme. I remember Taylor remarking, “That’s really sad.” Well, okay, it’s in this year’s bundle, too, and I got to it this time out. The second chapter picks up immediately after the first, with the main character in a hospital, recovering from a knife wound. The pandemic is part of the story, with the city and hospital locked down. It’s time to see how he’s grown and what he can bring to the life of a new and troubled character now that he’s found love and support of his own.
Tomodachi 8in1
This is a collection of pico-8 games from the creator of Terranova (a game about online fandom, friendship, and romance in the aughts). Tomodachi 8in1 is a collection of Terranova side stories, but you don't need to have played Terranova to appreciate them, in all their Livejournal-era messy emotions and bumbling sincerity. Tomodachi 8in1 is actually a three-in-one right now: Illuminesce is releasing one game/story a month, with the fourth game due out sometime this month. That adds a touch of the old Telltale serial style to these short, fluffy text-driven story games, and I'm so here for that.
For spending time and labor…
Time Bandit
On the one hand, you can’t get more direct than putting surplus labor value, time, and profit on screen in plain text. On the other, adding a layer of symbolism in the form of 3D gaming and routine (perhaps rote?) labor is a way to demonstrate Marx’s theories of time and capital for those who haven’t been subjected to The Marx-Engels Reader dozens of times while studying and teaching sociology. In this case, the medium and message are taken to a bit of an extreme. Characters are broad and exploitation of persons and environment in the service of labor and survival is on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
The mechanics of the game are impressively consonant with its subjects. When building a bridge or using a forklift, it isn’t enough to gather materials and load them to the correct spot: you have to wait for a digital timer of an hour or half an hour to count down. That’s in real time, but you can exit the game and come back. Just remember that if you have to return to public housing to save and quit. If you fall asleep anywhere else, you go to jail. If you thought that the game wasn’t also going to deal with carceral topics, rest easy.
There’s an interesting element of metagaming in the use of player’s computer clocks instead of an in-game clock cycle. That goes with some of the more absurd, science fiction elements and designs that emerge in the first hour or so of gameplay (depending, of course, on if one exits the game or adjusts their computer clock to “time travel.”) In addition to Karl Marx, there’s plenty of videogame inspiration that contributes to the absurdity. There’s sokoban (and, as a result, its original programmer Hiroyuki Imabayashi) as the puzzle style riffed upon with time, resources, and effort. And when a scuba-suited union organizer enlists the player in their cause, there’s a hint of Goichi Suda. The metagaming, camera angles, (eventual) stealth, and yes, absurdity, also points in the direction of Hideo Kojima. I mention those names and influences because Time Bandit isn’t simply didactic: developer phoenixup has an expansive approach to game design. Her curiosity about how to use game mechanics, and what they can signify, escapes the boundaries of more traditional games.
I wonder if some of the impetus behind this one is just to surface themes that other games elide. There’s no lying by omission here, though - it’s not that kind of fantasy. I recommend this one for the transition from Pride to Wrath month.
For overthrowing the kyriarchy…
Gender Atheist
This e-zine uses its author's experiences as a transmasc nonbinary person to explore what it means to not believe in gender the way one can not believe in god. The author's no Judith Butler, but as they say "hey, who can read Judith Bulter? (Maybe you, my reader… don't gloat over it.)" A really good read if you've ever wondered what it means to be gender nonconforming if gender is fake.
Spellbound
This short "Game Enby" game is by Alicia Luna Ripp and is a quasi-autobiographical story based on Ripp's experiences with "maladaptive daydreaming”: intense, involuntary, and often unpleasant visions in waking life. The game is framed as a therapy session, highlighting the value and the slow, partial value of therapy. Spellbound makes good use of gothic pixel art and tropes of Castlevania II, "What a horrible night to have a curse," to support its story about uncomfortably-real daydreams (not hallucinations) and a "real life" that barely feels more real than a dream.
Spellbound is actually hopeful, as much as a game can be when it is about living with depression, PTSD, and intrusive thoughts (visions).
For Being a Wizard
YOU ARE A WIZARD
Screenshot by the author.
Welcome to the only game you’re going to play this year with a totally a cappella soundtrack. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know Heather Flowers’ phenomenal Extreme Meatpunks Forever. YOU ARE A WIZARD does not have a whole lot to do with Extreme Meatpunks Forever, but it is canonically about “one of those wizards you see airbrushed on the sides of vans,” and if I were to play the Meatpunks RPG, I would probably give myself a wizard van. I started playing this game because I thought it would be a fun and silly joke, and while it is full of silly jokes (Puzzie the puzzle fox and Riddie the riddle fox keep trapping you in holes; the narrator is “your dad, but also not your dad”), it ends up in a surprisingly poignant place. Play as a floaty wizard with fireball powers on their way to save their boyfriend, who is also Sherlock Holmes. Get a little seasick from teleporting. Putz around in some caves (“It’s like Swiss cheese around here!”). Nod your head sagely as Puzzie and Riddie remind you to “Fuck gender.” Savor the taste of forgiveness. As a wizard.
Let’s Rob RJ McElhenny and Steal Her Golden Quill
On the other hand, you can also choose not to forgive, which is especially apt in the case of RJ McElhenny, a totally made up writer of wizard-based YA fiction who is 100% legally distinct from any living author. In this tabletop zine RPG by Glaive Guisarme games, McElhenny has been writing some books about how “only folks born the ‘right way’ can be REAL wizards,” and you have teamed up with your coolest wizard friends to confront her about this by doing wizard crimes: making off with her precious golden quill. The cheeky premise drew me in, but the mechanics are also really fun. Nobody wants to be McElhenny, so each player takes turns being the “lookout” who describes the action as you progress through the mansion room-by-room, determining the type of room and type of obstacle in it with the draw of a random playing card. Acting in relation to your chosen magic skill, source, and style will help you overcome obstacles, but you’ll need teamwork to get all the way to McElhenny and get her to retire in shame. Here’s your chance: be the wizard story you want to see in the world.
For a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets…
Kaiju Noir
Ok pal, you know how it goes. There's going to be a MacGuffin, see? Something everyone wants and no-one's going to get. And where there's a MacGuffin, there's a Femme Fatale. She's the one who draws the Hardboiled Detective into this mess—over his better judgment and the objections of his Gal Friday.
But…what if the Hardboiled Detective isn't a "he" or even human, but a nonbinary giant monster who lives in a kaiju city deep underground and has chosen to be a PI because they're a huge film noir geek? What if their Gal Friday is a disabled veteran from the disastrous war with the humans, and the Femme Fatale seems to know her part a little too well?
Caribara (Cari to their friends) is a performative Detective who isn't nearly as Hardboiled as their icons: Cari drinks soda instead of booze (out of 1984 oz cans), doesn't do "tough cop" (ACAB!), and I suspect their stogie is fake and that the smoke they belch is from their atomic breath. So what's really going down in New Monstropolis? I ain't saying nothing… you'll have to find out for yourself.
