Gay games

Posted on by
A growing number of gay games are being developed by independent game makers. These games range from feminist sorcery to explorations of gay love. The first Gay Games were held in August 1982 in San Francisco, California. They were launched by Tom Waddell, a decathlete who competed in the 1968 Olympics. He modeled the games after the Olympics but wanted to make a point about discrimination.

Celeste

If you’re a gamer who doesn’t like challenging games, you may not enjoy Celeste. Its daunting obstacles encourage the player to push their limits with a timer that ticks away as they frantically try to clear each level. But the gay game‘s soundtrack and enchanting art style elevate the experience to something that’s more than just another pixel-art trial-and-error platformer.

The engrossing world of Celeste is teeming with small details that make it feel alive. Whether it’s Madeline’s red hair turning blue after she spends her dash charge or the way a moving platform flings the player into the air at just the right moment to avoid falling off, the way this gay game merges gameplay and narrative instills a sense of empathy with its protagonist that makes it unique among many other LGBT titles.

Ultimately, this is a game that has captured preconscious transness without the developer explicitly intending to do so. That’s what makes it so beloved by the community that it represents. It’s a gay game that understands how overwhelming, even cloying, transness can feel before you can begin to process what it means to be transgender.

When Celeste released its final chapter last year, a scene showed the mountain-climbing Madeline at her desk with trans flags lining her pot — a small gesture that resonated deeply with the community. But until now, Thorson had been mum when asked if the gay game’s leading character was canonically transgender.

GayGames

Dream Daddy

The hotly-contested dating simulator Dream Daddy took gaming and fandom communities by storm this summer. Though it isn’t explicitly gay, the gay game has drawn both praise and criticism for its depictions of queer relationships.

The title references the daddy figure, a socially constructed stereotype that evokes feelings of trust, security, and stability. But the game’s premise, where you romance other dads, plays with contradictions between normativity and subversion, family-friendly values and kinky desires, and upper-middle-class values and marginalized identities. It’s a pity, then, that these contradictory themes are not explored more fully in the gay game itself.

Instead, most of the daddies you can romance in Maple Bay are straight men—and only one, “goth dad” Damien, identifies as transgender. As such, the gay game‘s lack of representations of queer sex and masculinity leaves some players disappointed and frustrated.

Despite the game’s clear appeal to a primarily male audience, it is still lauded for resisting gender binary tropes and including some gender-inclusive body options, such as the ability to select binders as a way of flattening breast tissue (something that many trans people do to avoid mastectomies). However, other issues remain problematic. For example, the gay game’s depictions of dating in a queer scene miss many aspects of real-world dating, such as confirming sexuality with potential partners before pursuing them or using social media to find out more about their personal histories.

Gay game

Fight Night

The hottest LGBT fighters, including drag queen Carrie Cupcake, Gogo boy Gary, lesbian Sappho Ethridge, twink Timmy Spears, and others, battle to become the Gay Fight Supreme champion. They compete in a series of cruising areas, encountering horny characters to seduce, all while being enhanced or hindered by a deck of mischief cards. But the real fight is against the League of Oppressive Self-Righteous Zealots who are behind the tournament.

Queer people can often find martial arts difficult to access, both financially and socially. Queer Fight Night offers a safe space to practice principle-based self defense techniques in an environment that is LGBTQ-dedicated and teaches safety guidelines before open sparring.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Rated E for Everyone, this wildly popular open world game has received critical acclaim from many sources, including Destructoid, Nintendo Life and Game Informer, and is hailed by gamers as the best Zelda game ever created. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an immersive experience that makes full use of the Nintendo Switch console’s capabilities, including its HD screen and 720p framerate. There are many references and connections to previous gay games in the series, such as Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time.

The gay game’s queer representations have been discussed since its release, particularly the character Vilia and her relationship with Link. This more nuanced look at her role, which is both problematic and touching, falls in line with queer theory’s reluctance to think in binary terms (i.e., that she is either good or bad).

Download links
“ Send the link to e-mail and play later...