Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters have been depicted in video games since the 1980s. In the history of video games, LGBT characters have been almost nonexistent for a long time, reflecting the overall heteronormativity of the medium. While there has been a trend towards greater representation of LGBT people in video games, they are frequently identified as LGBT in secondary material, such as comics, rather than in the games themselves. In 2018, Sam Greer of Gamesradar+ found only 179 games commercially released games with any LGBT representation, only 83 of which have queer characters who are playable characters, and only 8 of those games feature a main character who is pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as an option.
Bridget is a fictional character in Arc System Works's Guilty Gear video game series. Bridget first appeared in the 2002 video game Guilty Gear X2. In the series, Bridget was born male with a twin brother in a village where the birth of same-sex twins is considered bad luck; therefore, Bridget's parents named and raised Bridget as a girl to hide her cisgender identity, despite how much it pained them. In her youth, Bridget recognized their pain and set out to be a man and gain great wealth in order to disprove the superstition and to make her parents happy. After disproving the superstition, Bridget found that being a man did not make her happy, and realized that her true self was her desire to live as a woman in accordance to her gender identity.
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer, role-playing game designer, and interactive fiction author whose works include Mighty Jill Off and Dys4ia. She is the game designer in residence at the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media.
One Night Stand is a visual novel video game developed by Kinmoku. Players take the role of a man who wakes up from a drunken one-night stand beside a stranger and must piece together the events of the previous night. It was based on a free game Kinmoku wrote for a game jam at itch.io. One Night Stand was released for PC in 2016, and Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2019.
We Know the Devil is a visual novel developed and published by Date Nighto. It was released on September 12, 2015 for Microsoft Windows and MacOS, before receiving a Steam release on February 15, 2016. On July 4, 2016, a separate art book titled, "The Art of We Know the Devil," was published on itch.io by game artist Max Schwartz, followed by a March 19, 2017, itch.io release of the game, this time with a free supplementary demo serving the purpose of a prequel.
Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator is a visual novel video game released on July 20, 2017 for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and on September 22, 2017 for Linux. The game was developed and published by Game Grumps and written by Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray. The expanded Dadrector's Cut was released for the PlayStation 4, along with an update for the PC version, on October 30, 2018. It was released on Nintendo Switch on July 2, 2019.
Queer fashion is fashion among queer and nonbinary people that goes beyond common style conventions that usually associate certain colors and shapes with one of the two binary genders. Queer fashion aims to be perceived by consumers as a fashion style that focuses on experimenting garments based on people's different body shapes instead of following the restrictions given by gendered clothing categorization.
Book of Demons is an isometric hack and slash action role-playing created by Polish studio Thing Trunk. The game was officially released through Steam on 13 December 2018. The game was originally developed for Microsoft Windows, but the developers informed about plans to release it also on Xbox One. Book of Demons is the first installment of the Return 2 Games series that aims to bring classic hardcore genres to broader audiences. The game features an unusual art style - all elements of the game are visualised as papercuttings and pop-up book elements, and such style defines visual framework for the whole series. The game also brings some novelties to the genre - the card system which replaces equipment and skills systems typical for the genre, the Flexiscope feature which allows players to control duration of a game session and movement restricted to a path which add a tactical element to the gameplay.
Butterfly Soup is a visual novel developed by Brianna Lei and published in September 2017 for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The game has the player follow the perspectives of four LGBT Asian-American girls in Fremont, California, alternating between their first year of high school in 2008 and when they were young children. The coming-of-age story shows them as they join a baseball club and centers on the romance between the main character, Diya, and her friend Min.
Nathalie Lawhead is an independent net artist and video game designer residing in Irvine, California.
Boyfriend Dungeon is a dungeon crawler-dating sim developed and published by Kitfox Games. Taking place in an urban fantasy setting, the player character must fight through dungeons with the help of a human partner who can transform into a sentient weapon. Outside of dungeons, the player can date their partner in visual novel-style sequences that increase their power in combat. It was released for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on August 11, 2021, followed by a PlayStation 5 version on February 14, 2023.
Juno Morrow is an American multidisciplinary artist, independent game designer, educator, and photographer whose work often deals with existential and ontological themes. Morrow received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Houston in 2009 and her Master of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in 2015. She is an assistant professor of game design at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.
Doomed Love is a point-and-click visual novel released on Itch.io on June 11, 2021, that serves as an unofficial adaptation of the 1993 video game Doom as a dating sim. It was programmed, illustrated, and composed by Scottish cartoonist David B. Cooper, with an updated version releasing June 18. The game was designed in response to a Tweet received by Cooper in response to "cute" fan art he had drawn of Doom's demon characters, deriding the original Doom series as "too violent" by comparison to the fan art. Recurring The Simpsons character Lenny Leonard is also included in the game, in reference to "Sad Springfield" fan art of Cooper's which had gone viral earlier that year. The fangame has received positive critical reception, with Doom co-creator John Romero praising the game and his own inclusion in it.
Fortune-499 is a role-playing video game in which the player takes on the role of an oracle working in the "magical resources" department of an unnamed corporation, and has to prevent an acquisition by monsters after the company makes an initial public offering. In-game combat is card-based and takes the form of rock paper scissors matches. The game was initially released for Windows in February 2018.
Wikipedia: The Text Adventure is an indie interactive fiction browser game developed by the London-based Kevan Davis. It was released in 2017, and pulls data from Wikipedia to automatically generate a playable video game. It was praised by the media for its unique idea and retro appearance, but criticized for the emotionless, AI-generated nature of its content.
Butterfly Soup 2 is a visual novel developed by Brianna Lei and published in October 2022 for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is the sequel to the 2017 Butterfly Soup, and begins shortly after the conclusion of the first game. It has the player follow the perspectives of four LGBT Asian-American girls in Fremont, California, alternating between their first year of high school in 2009 and when they were young children. The coming-of-age story centers on the romance between Akarsha and her friend Noelle, their struggles with their parents' expectations and influence, and their experiences as second-generation immigrants.
Pagan: Autogeny is a video game by Canadian independent developer Oleander Garden. Described as an "experimental first-person open-world role-playing video game set in the digital ruins of an abandoned massively multiplayer online role playing game", Autogeny is the third game in Garden's Pagan trilogy. The game received praise from several critics, with several raising attention to the unique exploration of themes around identity and gender.
Bucket Detective is a video game released in 2018 by The Whale Husband, a collaboration between American independent developer Jesse Barksdale and Finnish developer Samu Kovanen. Described as a "dark comedy horror game", Bucket Detective is an adventure game in which an illiterate and perverse author endures personal and moral sacrifices made to a cult in order to receive the literary inspiration to publish a novel. Bucket Detective, in line with Barksdale's previous game, The Static Speaks My Name, was strongly influenced by personal themes of "depression, anxiety and obsession" and designed in ways to disorient and confuse the player. The game, which was the first commercial project from Barksdale, received a positive reception from critics, with particular attention directed at the game's unusual and grotesque premise and disturbing content.
Everything is Going to Be OK is a 2017 work of digital art by alienmelon, the pseudonym of independent net artist Nathalie Lawhead. Described by Lawhead as an "interactive zine", the work is a vignette of several non-linear and interactive elements informed by Lawhead's experiences with "struggle, survival and coping with the aftermath of surviving bad things". The work received positive reception from publications, with attention directed to the game's use of humor to humanise and relate to experiences of trauma and victimhood, and received several awards and nominations at the Independent Games Festival, IndieCade, and A-MAZE. Following release of the work, Lawhead experienced online and offline harassment when showcasing it at Double Fine's Day of the Devs event in November 2017, prompting a discussion from Lawhead and media publications about the challenges of publishing and exhibiting experimental or art games and the risks of online harassment relating to streaming of these works.
