#itchio queer bundle

[efangamez]

Pride TTRPG Bundle Sale: Help a Queer Person Thrive! Buy nearly $70 of games for $25!

I am a disabled, trans, and queer game designer looking to live again to afford medication, sustained housing, therapy/psychiatry, and some money to save for emergencies.

This sale will help me to support myself as someone who makes less than $15,000 a year. I kinda wanna live a little and heal myself, and sadly, money is a big roadblock for me.

In this bundle, you can obtain:

GRIM, a retro FPS styled TTRPG inspired by Quake.

Neon Nights, a cyberpunk TTRPG with nearly infinite build variety, and it's two MASSIVE expansions!

Wrath of the Undersea, a TTRPG where you play as vengeful Eldritch peoples trying to reclaim the colonized surface.

Disk Master's expansions, where you can live out your Pokemon or Digimon dream on pen and paper!

There are also some stretch goals attached to the sale as well!

$500: This pays for debts and a month of groceries.

Will hold a Trans Rage Game Jam in July!

$1,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, and some cushion.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July AND will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August!

$2,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, and computer payments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$3,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, and gender affirming care.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$4,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, AND will release another one-page PWYW game!

$5,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointment, and will help SUSTAIN these things that are paid for.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, will release another one-page PWYW game, AND will host monthly game jams for the rest of the year!

$5,000+: Any money after this would be donated to trans non-profits where I reside and GoFundMe's for Palestinian families on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT!

[queerhalloweenstories]

The deadline to apply to the Queer Halloween Stories Bundle 2024 is this Saturday, August 3!

What's the Queer Halloween Stories Bundle?

The QHSB is a mutual aid bundle directly supporting queer creators of narrative-driven media that relate to themes of horror or the Halloween holiday. The QHSB sale runs from October 1 to November 1 and is sold for either $60 or $10+.

Cool, how do I sign up?

To apply to the bundle, please do the following:

Fill out this 22+ question Google Form to verify your account, submissions, and opt-in status

Join this jam page and submit your projects

We look forward to seeing your stuff!

[not-fun]

queer games bundle on itchio time!

its that time of year again, the time of year when a hugeee collection of works (books, games, game assets, comics-!) by lgbtq+ creators on itchio goes on sale.  450 THINGS for 60$, the price of One idk nintendo game or w/e and THIS YEAR i got to join the bundle too!!!!!!!!! so the pdf artbook of Queer Birds and also a cute lil gay comic i found cleaning my hd are part of this. i am: just a little excited. check it OUT! https://itch.io/b/1812/queer-games-bundle-2023

[queergamesbundle]

Queer Games Bundle is back for a fourth year, with 500 queer games and artworks $60 (or $10+), the low-end cost of a new AAA game.

We've joined charity TTRPGs for Palestine as Featured Bundles on the itchio homepage! Check us both out.

✨ http://itch.io/b/2506

[marsadler]

End of Summer Sale

Snag these individually half off, or as a bundle for $3.99! This sale is running through the end of August!

I have a lot of bills coming up this month and next month, so anything helps! I have a goal of $150 to be able to pay those bills, but even if I don't get to that, every bit helps.

Included in the sale are my 2 novellas and 1 novelette!

✨️ FIRST CREATION ♡ my debut novella ♡ religious horror romance, angels and demons, this one is for the Hozier girlies (/gn) and everyone who deserves compensation from the Catholic church, 22k words

🥀 Blood & Flowers ♡ my sophomore novella which won the best sophomore book award in the Queer Indie Awards last year ♡ haunted house and vampires, erotic horror, 28k words

🦷 EYETOOTH ♡ my T4T eroguro & medkink erotic horror novelette ♡ magic, a descent into madness reminiscent of old gothic novels, 18k words

Here's some trope maps if you want to learn more about all of them:

You can also find blurbs, content warnings, etc. on my itchio page, or carrd!

Please be aware that all of these books are horror, dark, and contain explicit content. They are not intended for anyone under the age of 18!

[theneoncaster]

Start your engines, the High Voltage Tabletop Bundle is now live on Itchio!

This bundle is live until the end of January 31st so don't miss out and grab your copy today!

The High Voltage Tabletop Bundle is a collection of tabletop games designed to play fast and loud - whether that's because they set up and play quickly, come packed with more action than a shounen battle anime, or fuel vibrant, energetic character moments in both success and tragedy. Laser gunfights, burning rubber, music so loud it wakes the neighbours.

This set of twenty games for $20 is curated to give you an exciting taste of what indie game design has to offer for those looking for some bite to their gaming.

Looking for something simple to learn to teach a group of folks new to the tabletop scene? We've got you. Hankering for something fun and fast to run for your long-time players in between campaign arcs? You'll find it here. Looking to capture the neon nostalgia of retro pulp and turn-of-the-century anime? Oh boy do we have that.

I'm super proud of the broad range of (delightfully queer) designers who have come together to make this bundle happen, from newcomers to the scene to some serious movers and shakers!

Your support will bring some serious delight to some excellent folks, so hop on over to The High Voltage Tabletop Bundle and Live Fast, (Polyhedral) Die Hard!

[devsgames]

Heya, a while ago I got a job as a programmer for a small game studio (yay!), though now struggling to manage the work load from disability issues and it not being better than my previous development job, I've realised I would very much like to go solo. I believe I have the technical ability and training to do so but I'm not sure how to manage it financially, especially with an almost full time job (that I can't reduce more than I already have). Do you have any tips on the money side of becoming independent? Would just like to be stable enough to make a living on it!

Thanks for the ask!!

First: congrats on getting a job! That's excellent!

I'm going to go in-depth because I think it's a valid question, but I also want to be super clear that no one should go solo until they're absolutely prepared for the risks associated with it:

Sustainability

I can't personally speak to working with a disability, but my biggest piece of advice for going solo is: don't quit your day job. Odds are good that as a solo developer you are not going to make enough money to earn a living.

In my experience it's usually better to be miserable and struggling at a full-time job that pays well than miserable and struggling as a solo dev that doesn't pay rent. At a full-time job you may not happy but at least you put food on the table and can save money and spend it on things guilt-free, which is something a lot of solo devs can't do.

I think there's a misconception that being a solo dev is sustainable when in actuality the way most solo devs are sustainable is by already having a popular game/following, or having an existing safety net or second job that pays the bills, or by working their asses off more than they would at a full-time job. Solo dev exhibits survivorship bias because the solo devs who couldn't keep up in the market simply aren't doing it anymore. Solo dev is so competitive and the pay so unreliable that unless you strike gold (which is very unlikely) I can't in good faith recommend anyone attempt going solo without some sort of extensive planning to back it up.

I'll use myself as a point of comparison for full transparency (because I am absolutely not exempt from having immense privilege and I think it's important to acknowledge that): I was laid off in 2023, but my partner currently makes 110k CDN a year. Before I got laid off I made 85k CDN a year. We've been saving up for about ~7 years. Cost of living in our area of the country is very high, but we live in a place owned by a relative so our rent is truly dirt cheap so our overall costs are incredibly low. My partner pays most of our expenses, and I'm on her insurance plan. We're both open and comfortable about this arrangement now, but if something happened financially I'd be running out and working a job immediately out of necessity. I am incredibly privileged to have a comfortable living situation that affords me flexibility to focus on creative stuff full-time, but it's because of these circumstances that I can do solo dev in a dedicated capacity.

A Peek At Finances

I started solo dev in 2020 and until 2023 I did solo dev alongside my full-time job and I shipped 3 games in that time (so roughly one game per year), so I was saving money and making games on the side. I ran a Kickstarter as part of that and made a number of sales as part of the Queer Games Bundle (which offered much more generous payouts back then than it is able to now). Now in 2024 I do it full-time, but despite this I don't make enough to survive.

Here's all the profits from my game sales from the last 4 years as a solo dev (in USD). Remember this is from the last 4 years altogether (not per-year), and 2024 was the first year I did it exclusively:

Steam

Itchio (this is largely due to the Queer Games Bundle, I generally don't make much profit off itch at all outside of that)

On top of this, I work as a Course Director at a local University for 4 months of the year for an additional $10k to supplement my income. I also have had some other revenue streams from streaming, commissions, freelance writing, talks, Patreon, etc. however that's approximately in the ~$100 every few months range and not terribly noteworthy.

As you can tell the solo dev sales is not really enough money for most people to make rent on, and some of my games (like Lofty Quest) cost a lot of money relative to their profit. Solo dev is incredibly risky because even with perfect planning you can work on a project for years only for it to make you like, $300 in the end.

All this is to say; solo dev really is not sustainable full-time for most people unless you are the 0.1% of people who can afford to live on $1000-5000 USD a year (though I feel like most people can't).

"""Side-Hustle""" Approach

I think solo dev is more manageable as a (for lack of a better word) 'side hustle' than it is a full-time job. But I find the secret to doing that is (like any craft) is to learn to enjoy the process and not the product - if you enjoy making your own games then it will give you energy, as opposed to sucking it away like making games for work does.

When I was working in the office I'd be designing stuff for my TTRPGs whenever I took breaks at my desk, or writing notes and plans on digital games whenever I had some down time. Even working remotely I would squeeze in working on my game during big team meetings or before I went to bed - again mostly just because I liked the act of making my own games. I did it because I enjoyed it and it afforded me more freedom than I had working on content on a AAA game, but I never really did it because I was ever planning to make a ton of money or planning to go solo. Doing solo dev part-time helped me find a work-life balance where I was still feeling creatively fulfilled despite working at a job I hated, and profit came after that - I only fully focused on solo dev when I suddenly lost my job and found myself in a comfortable living situation.

An additional thing I'd say about solo dev is that if you 'believe' you have the ability to do it, then try to ship a premium game right now by yourself from start to finish as a side thing before re-shaping your life plans around it. It sounds obvious but until you ship a game by yourself you don't know what it's like to ship a game by yourself, and it'll give you a better idea of what it's actually like and if it's something you can actually manage to do more long-term.

If you're really really going to go solo full-time and nothing is ever going to stop you (once again, I would not recommend considering this at all but I know some people have trouble listening to advice), then here's some survival tips:

You should ensure you have a plan that is concrete and actionable - make it a SMART goal so that it's measurable and you can quantifiable hold yourself to it. E.g. "I'm going to publish a game solo and see how it goes" isn't something to bank your livelihood on, but "I'm going to release two small games before November and see what the process is like, and if I'm not making rent by February I will find a part time job" is. Remember that finding a new job after being off the job market will take time (sometimes months) and incorporate that additional plan. Formulate a Plan B and hold yourself to it, and then a handful of 'Plan C through G' worst-case scenarios, because you don't want to bank your livelihood on solo dev. Hold yourself to your plan whenever possible, keep going back to that plan, and know when to call it quits. Solo dev isn't worth sacrificing your life over.

Before going solo, calculate your monthly burn rate and current savings and know how long it will last - also assume you're going to spend more money than you usually do on average (because you'll probably spend more than you expect). Plan ways to cut costs in your daily life, what you can stop spending money on, etc. Figure out your insurance situation with your work; you'll either have to get your own plan or lose health coverage in some instances. If you're planning on quitting your job and you have a quit date be sure to maximize the amount of money you spend on insurance before you do; buy new orthotics, new glasses, see your doctor, stock up on your meds, etc. Don't do any unnecessary spending if at all possible.

Read up on your local business and tax laws, and learn how it works for developers in your area with regards to revenue from foreign countries (if you live outside the US, as most storefronts operate within the US). If you can, find a lawyer and an accountant who works with game developers in your area (if you know any local devs ask them who they use, they'll usually be happy to share). Seek out publishers, investors, grants, developers in your area and make connections as early as possible because they could be a lifeline down the road. If you're going to be sustainable as a solo dev it's usually from grants, investors or contract work and not because of sales alone. Network early and network often.

When you start a game, be acutely confident (and honest with yourself) of its marketability - no one thinks your game is as cool as you do. Don't make an echo chamber about your work and be open to feedback. Ask others what they think about it to validate your intentions.

Plan to spend money on promoting it. Post about your game as part of your job and never shut up about it. Be as annoying about your work as you feel comfortable, and then double the amount of annoying you are. You'll get used to being annoying because if no one finds out about your game your game will not make money.

Work like a studio; playtest your game early and often. Before you finish your first game, plan what your next game is going to be and start prototyping that. Be your own producer, err on the side of caution and cut as many things as often as possible.

I made a whole talk on the production side of being a solo dev here if you want more specific production tips.

---

Anyway, sorry that may not be...terribly helpful of an answer, but I think a realistic approach is usually best. Thanks again for the ask!

[arbitrarydelight]

Do you like toxic office yaoi?!

If so, you should play my visual novel about the worst workplace affair ever. Featuring...

The most bitter protagonist, whose inner thoughts are vile and poisonous

A man who goes by the name of Evil because Eveline is too embarrassing. He also happens to work in finance!

Doing anything to get ahead... if you know what I mean

Play the game on Itchio: https://arbitrrrary.itch.io/ambition-plot

It's also in the Queer Games Bundle: https://itch.io/b/2506/queer-games-bundle-2024-with-10-option

[gum-and-doc]

Gummy and the Doctor is part of the fantastic Queer Halloween Stories this year over on Itchio! This bundle includes a ton of different things (like games, comics, etc) and they're all GAY and SPOOKY and ready to make your October better!

There's a $60 version to go HARD and support creators and a $10 version to STILL GO HARD and support creators, it's different so different budgets can afford to get in on the fun together!

$60: https://bit.ly/QueerHalloweenStories2023-Fright $10: https://bit.ly/QueerHalloweenStories2023-Treat

[fictionfactorygames]

Steam Sales and Henchman For Hire Bundle!

Are you looking for a narrative game that's…

🏳️‍🌈Queer Friendly? 💦Optionally Naughty? 😈Criminally Funny? 😻Lets You Pet a Cat?

Then please ignore my grammar error just now, and enjoy ✨Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain✨ for 20% off on Steam!

Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain, now on sale on:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2227030/Penny_Larceny_Gig_Economy_Supervillain/ Itchio: https://fictionfactorygames.itch.io/penny-larceny

But wait, there's more! Keep reading! We've got another deal that's positively a steal…

We're teaming up with Silken Sail to sell the "Henchmen for Hire" double pack! Get Penny Larceny and Henchman Story, two great games about being a minor-tier comic book criminal, at a combined discount! It's time to be the bad guys!

Available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35773/Henchmen_for_Hire_Bundle/

Finally, if you're planning to stream Penny Larceny during this event, slide into our DMs; we've got codes you can use for giveaways.

We'll be directly giving away codes here on our social channels as well, so keep an eye out!

It's CRIME TIME, friendos! Let's do this!

[karmicpunishmentgames]

General Updates!

I return hopefully back in the swing of making things! I hit a pretty big pitfall there for a while but recently got back on the horse so here's where we're at now.

♥ I've added an FAQ both here on tumblr and on my main website. In doing so I've emptied out the questions from here and on CuriousCat that were repeats of previous questions or each other. ♥ Unfortunately I decided not to finish The Biting Cold. The assets I completed for it will be made available on my itchio page for others to use whenever I find the time to properly organize the files and layers. Namely I'll be offering the backgrounds, Nora's sprite, and the interface I designed for the game for free use in other people's games and the option to tip.

♥ I'm trying to complete my most recent game in time for this year's Queer Games Bundle. I'll be elaborating on it in its own post! We're three weeks out but I do have some decent progress so hopefully I can make it!

♥ DTWM Good Route is still currently on the backburner. I'll let everyone know when I get back to working on it.

♥ I won't be resuming full devlogs on my website until after my current game is done as I'm on a tight deadline and don't feel it would be a good use of my time to use time writing those. But I'll be sure to give this game a thorough post-mortem!

[efangamez]

Pride TTRPG Bundle Sale: Help a Queer Person Thrive! Buy nearly $70 of games for $25!

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT PURCHASE! <3

Join me in celebrating Pride Month by supporting me, a trans and queer creator looking for financial assistance to live life to the fullest.

This sale will help me to support myself as someone who makes less than $15,000 a year. I kinda wanna live a little and heal myself, and sadly, money is a big roadblock for me.

In this bundle, you can obtain:

GRIM, a retro FPS styled TTRPG inspired by Quake.

Neon Nights, a cyberpunk TTRPG with nearly infinite build variety, and it's two MASSIVE expansions!

Wrath of the Undersea, a TTRPG where you play as vengeful Eldritch peoples trying to reclaim the colonized surface.

Disk Master's expansions, where you can live out your Pokemon or Digimon dream on pen and paper!

There are also some stretch goals attached to the sale as well!

$500: This pays for debts and a month of groceries.

Will hold a Trans Rage Game Jam in July!

$1,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, and some cushion.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July AND will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August!

$2,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, and computer payments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$3,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, and gender affirming care.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$4,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, AND will release another one-page PWYW game!

$5,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointment, and will help SUSTAIN these things that are paid for.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, will release another one-page PWYW game, AND will host monthly game jams for the rest of the year!

$5,000+: Any money after this would be donated to trans non-profits where I reside and GoFundMe's for Palestinian families on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT!

[zeynatura]

Prev post reminded me that i finally got to play Repurpose, a queer Visual Novel about people dying and ending up in Limbo :D

After playing the demo 2 years ago, i didn't even notice when they finished the game but alas i'm glad it's out, i got it on itchio in 2 bundles actually lol but if i didn't u bet i would have bought it separately

i have only played one route so far and it's Noel's (of course i went for the panro ace genderfluid character lmao) and i am very happy to say that there were more ace jokes and cake analogies than i thought there would be, i was pleasantly surprised!

[ixcaliber]

At Least A Single Sentence On Every Game I Played In June 2022

A star (*) next to a game’s title indicates this game is available in the Queer Games Bundle on itch.io

1. Don’t Toy With Me *

What if Toy Story but every character was one slight away from losing their minds. It’s a short visual novel and it has a pretty neat conception of a world of sentient toys and the potential consequences thereof. It’s neat in that your interactions with the world are fairly hands off (choosing to tap on a dollhouse or not, deciding you like one toy or another) but these minor interactions have a major impact on the psyches of the toys. This is a horror/thriller narrative though, no happy endings to be found here.

Rating: Neat concept, not my genre.

2. Someone Stole My LUNCH *

Very lighthearted comedic visual novel about your efforts to eat your own damn lunch.

Rating: An hour’s worth of silly fun.

3. Full Service Shop *

NSFW visual novel about sapphic & kinky transhumanism. Nice variety of characters with their own quirks and preferences. Comes with a text file of content warnings so you can avoid anything you don’t like and every encounter has a safeword option to hit if you become uncomfortable. It's trans inclusive, letting you set your pronouns independantly from any genitalia. And the writing is pretty damn good.

Rating: Great.

4. WitchWay

(not on the Queer Bundle, but was included in the Bundle For Racial Justice and Equality, if you have access to that)

A fun little puzzle platformer where you’re a witch girl and you have the ability to move and control certain objects in the world. It’s a very focused game, a tightly connected series of rooms at the bottom of a well, where you can explore andeventually find your way out. Exploring is more rewarding than you’d expect with an optional objective hidden in every room and seven or eight cute bunnies to rescue.

Rating: Pretty damn good.

5. Parsnip

(was available in the Bundle For Racial Justice and Equality)

A little point and click adventure that’s trying to nail the unsettling line between cute and creepy. It’s one of those where the protagonist is cutesy and well meaning and the rest of the world is normal with some dark undertones and the protagonist is incapable of seeing that anything is wrong. It is a little rough. I play a couple more games in this shared world from the Queer Bundle which is why I sought this one out, but if this sounds like it won’t be your kind of thing then it probably won’t be. It’s not integral to understanding any of the following games anyway.

Rating: Rough but charming.

 6. The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith *

Set in the same world as Parsnip, this game has a much more approachable tone and gameplay structure. It follows trans disaster Trixie Glimmer Smith as she, at the behest of her extremely highly strung friend, attempts to get ahold of The King In Yellow and then attempts to deal with the consequences of these actions. You also have the option of spending time with a couple of different characters and becoming embroiled in their eldritch subplots. A neat little game that continues and improves on its use of eldritch horror from Parsnip, but brings it more into the spotlight and makes it the focus of the game as it deserves to be.

Rating: Pretty damn good.

7. Co-Open *

A game in which you are a kid, going shopping at the local store on your own for the first time. Explore the store, talk to people, find secrets and feed the incredible physics defying kitties. There’s a surprising amount of things to do and people to talk to in this one and it’s very gay.

Rating: Great.

8. Yuki’s Palpitating, Passionate, Phenomenal, and quite frankly Proficient quest for a (hot) girlfriend!!!

Short and silly lesbian romance visual novel. Yuki, a shy new girl at school, finds herself propositioned by three girls and must date all of them to decide who she wants to go out with. The girls are good, the art is cute, the tone is extremely lighthearted. The conclusion of the short story is pretty much spoiled by the title of its sequel.

Rating: An hour’s worth of silly lesbian fun.

9. Spica, Chinatsu and Haruka’s Enchanting, Marvelous and quite frankly Elaborate quest to save their (cute) girlfriend!!! *

The followup to Y4P; Yuki’s been kidnapped and its up to her girlfriends to rescue her. But don’t worry, despite the kidnapping it’s still as lighthearted if not more so than previously. This game develops the interactions between the rest of the polycule and, through the framing device of Yuki talking about her relationships to her kidnapper, discusses in simple terms the nature of a polycule.

Rating: An hour’s worth of silly lesbian fun.

10. TetrEscape *

(Has a publicly accessible in browser version)

A simple little puzzle game; push the tetris blocks and try to make rows or columns in order to clear your path to the exit. There’s about fifteen levels or so, and though there is some escalation of difficulty it never gets too tough.

Rating: A neat little thing.

11. Three Lesbians In A Barrow *

Another game in the Parsnip/Trixie Glimmer Smith series. This one stars Tabitha Knight as she and her friends Nikita and Trixie visit a mysterious barrow for an archeological studies project. When they get trapped inside it seems as though something else may be trapped in there with them. This is much more shortform than ttotgs, quickly setting up its conflict and then giving you a variety of actions each of which pass time. After a certain point events will have escalated and will unfold based on your decisions. This one is more regular horror than eldritch horror, though as much time is given to these girls trying to understand one another better.

Rating: Pretty good.

12. Symbiosis *

(Has a publicly accessible in browser version)

An RPGMaker horror game, where you are a witch protecting your son after a break-in to your house. This game has a nice little art style and an intriguing atmosphere.

Rating: Neat concept, not my genre.

13. A Normal Lost Phone *

In this game you find a stranger’s phone, and slowly learn about their lives. There is something of a level of discomfort playing a game like this, intentionally violating the privacy of this fictional character. If you can put that to one side there is something very compelling about this kind of game; the intertwining of puzzle and narrative as you work to find the clues that lead you to find the next peice of information that serves as a password to access the next section of the phone. It’s diagetic puzzle solving in a very satisfying way. It is in fact the diagetic...ness of the game that really makes it uncomfortable to look through their text conversations and emails etc. Especially if you’re already familiar with the game and it’s reveal.

Rating: Pretty good but with unintentional and difficult to remove unpleasantness.

14. Some Sword / Some Play *

(Has a publicly accessible in browser version)

A short piece of NSFW interactive fiction. This one has more plot and less kink than I was anticipating. It still has some nice moments and is very trans inclusive; all characters pronouns can be set as desired and genitalia is once again seperated from pronouns. There’s a little kink but it’s wholesome kink, softer than I was anticipating. You’ll probably enjoy this if you want a swashbuckling steampunk adventure with some interesting worldbuilding and a dash of lewdness.

Rating: Pretty good.

15. Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story

(was available in the bundle for Palestinian Aid)

My feelings on this one are pretty much identical to my feelings on A Normal Lost Phone. Though the premise runs a little thinner here at least in terms of puzzles. I did feel myself losing patience, especially when the diagetic nature of them means that they have minimal guidance. There was one I looked up tips for just because I wasn’t confident I was even looking for the right thing. In A Normal Lost Phone there was a point towards the beginning where I felt kind of bogged down with information, names of contacts and events that Sam had been to, learned long before I could provide context to any of it. There’s a little of that here but less front loaded. The game, in the end has a good positive message, but once again there’s that feeling of actively intruding on someone else’s personal information thats just sort of inescapable given the format.

Rating: Pretty good but with unintentional and difficult to remove unpleasantness.

16. Umurangi Generation

This is a pretty cool photography game with a neat artstyle and an unfolding narrative told through environmental detail as you explore and photograph the levels. Unfortunately I’m an incapabale of parsing a story unless it is explicitly told to me so if there’s anything deeper than ‘an alien war is happening’ it didn’t really manage to reach me. It is a pretty neat game to play though, it has sort of a Tony Hawk’s Pro War Photographer vibe to it, where you’re running around short little hub zones trying to check off tasks before the deadline (not actually enforced, you just can’t get the second unlockable object for a level if you don’t do everything in time). I had a good time with it.

Rating: Pretty damn good.

17. Disc Room

Explore a space station full of spinning blades. Survive as long as you can. Die quite a lot. Every room is like a little time trial to simply survive as long as you can, though with some interesting variables thrown in in the later stages of the game. It reminded me a lot of HyperDot but with HyperDot there was a very small number of different kind of projectiles that could come after you, allowing you to recognize them on sight and develop more of a familiarity with them. Almost every room in Disc Room has a new kind of disc that behaves in a new kind of way, more novelty less mastery. There are hidden rooms to find, secrets to uncover and a bestiary to fill in. It has more replayability than I was sort of expecting.

Rating: Pretty good.

18. Limbo Line *

This one comes upfront with a semi-diagetic warning about references to self-harm and suicide that i kind of feels undersells the severity of the scenes in question. The game is about being recruited to a sort of interdimensional crisis support line and taking calls from people. I don’t think that these scenes, which does not make up the main bulk of the game’s content, are tastelessly handled and i do feel that they have a point and purpose, but I’d have appreciated a stronger warning.

Most of the interactions you have in this game are fairly lighthearted and there are fun scenes with your extremely varied call centre colleagues. There’s probably a lot of content I didn’t see here based on who you decide to spend your breaktime with, but personally I don’t think I could replay the game and go through the more intense scenes in order to see this other stuff.

Rating: Fun in places, intense and emotional in other places. Be strongly warned if you have issues with suicidal thoughts or emotional manipulation.

19. Purrgatory *

(Has a publicly accessible in browser version)

This is a little point and click adventure with an extremely simple art style and a very silly sense of humour. You explore Purrgatory, make friends with its residents and maybe find a way out. The characters are great, it’s very fun to see them slowly open up to you and each other. Purrgatory, as in the afterlife in which you find yourself, despite its simple aesthetic, has such a unique chaotic vibe. From the name of the game I assumed that this was about a game where I was a cat going to the afterlife, in practice it feels more like a bunch of humans have been misfiled into an afterlife that was designed only for cats. It’s really neat.

In terms of gameplay it’s a point and click adventure but simplified. If you have an item you need for a puzzle you will use it when you interact with where its supposed to go, which cuts out the whole ‘use everything on everything’ mindset. It is semi-open world, sort of. You can progress individual storylines with each of Purrgatory’s residents in more or less whatever order you like. Sometimes they will move around after you have completed one part of their storyline. There is a guide with hints and solutions that I found invaluable for the spots where I got stuck. One of which was just realizing that a cupboard existed.

Rating: Great

20. What’s Your Gender *

This is a very short little experimental game that uses the shape of Antichamber to explore themes of gender. It didn’t super click with me, but I could see this being a good tool for introducing gender concepts to someone unfamiliar with them.

Rating: Neat little thing.

21. Stillwater *

Very short visual novel about a private investigator, his assistant and his dog looking into a seemingly supernatural mystery. It has a very nice presentation, a tense atmosphere and good chemistry between its characters.

Rating: Pretty good.

22. A Nightmare’s Trip *

In this game you play Adrien, a child’s nightmare made manifest as its own disconnected being, as they take a vacation to a bustling city and meet a wide cast of fun characters. This game is wildly inventive in ways I wasn’t expecting. A small detail alluded to but never really elaborated upon is how the world in which it is set seems to be some kind of merging of multiple realities. It allows it to do one of my favourite things which is to just have all kinds of weird entities from other worlds just coexisting and its not even a big deal. A flight attendant you speak to on the flight is just a venus fly trap lady and that’s perfectly normal. I love that kind of thing. This game has a great cast of characters and a tone that is sometimes chaotic, sometimes contemplatative.

Rating: Pretty damn good.

23. Freshly Frosted

A chill factory puzzle game. Place conveyers to move doughnuts through levels, add toppings and take them to the appropriate serving hatches. It’s a game that starts off simple and adds complexity over time, each batch of 12 levels adding some new element to contend with, though you are never given the ability to do more than place conveyers. It makes sense though in the way the game is designed, each new element added is more often more an obstacle to be worked around rather than a tool to be utilized.

It’s extremely chill. There’s something of a loose narrative. A narrator who tells you that they spend a lot of time imagining doughnut factories in the sky and each set of levels representing a season. Though maybe narrative isn’t exactly the right word. It’s more a slowly building feeling of companionship and familiarity, and in my experience it does succeed building this bond.

Rating: Nice chill time.

24. Null Event *

(Has a publicly accessible in browser version) 

An NSFW smutgame where you are tasked with solving the mystery of disappearing drones in a cyberpunk world. Content is heavily focused around kinks of drones and identity loss. My experience of this game is a little tainted because I didn’t anticipate just how far the Supernaturalist storyline was going to go and it blew past my level of interest. But on subsequent playthroughs I stuck more closely to my areas of interest and had a much better time.

The only things I would really complain about is that, everyone has very cyberpunk names and with the blank character portraits that about 50% of the cast have it took me a couple of playthroughs to really parse each character as a seperate individual. Also, at the end of the first day you get invited to have a lewd time with your friend Em and get the opportunity to select from a small number of different scenes, and I sort of expected that this framework might be applied to other characters or other lewd situations, but it isn’t used again in the game, but from what I can tell the game is still being worked on and this may be implemented at some point.

Rating: Pretty good.

25. We Should Talk *

This is a game about being at a bar, talking with some of the people there and having a conversation with your girlfriend via text. It has a pretty neat conversational system where your response is split into three sections and you choose each of these from a selection independently, leading to some nuanced responses that you can say. I can’t say how robustly these different responses are recognized and responded to, as I only played through once.

But that said there was only one point in the game where it didn’t seem to parse correctly the statement that I was making. In response to Sam wondering whether something going wrong at her job was her fault, I tried to communicate that she seems to always blame herself and she responded as though I’d said a complete non-sequiteur.

There’s like nine different endings, but I was satisfied with my experience with a single ending. It certainly felt as though the ending I got was ‘you did a good job listening to and communicating with your girlfriend’ and it felt as though other endings would just be points on an axis of failure to success.

Rating: Neat little thing.

26. Making Friends *

A cute little visual novel where you guide a pair of witches, not through their actions but by picking their emotional responses. Its a cute little story of a friendship that can be neglected or could blossom into something more. I may have teared up a little on this one.

Rating: An hour’s worth of cute lesbian fun.

27. 2064: Read Only Memories *

(I talk some pretty big spoilers in this one, feel free to skip ahead if you don’t want to hear them)

I’ve been trying to play this game for years, but for one reason or another my attention span has never lasted long enough for me to get through it until now. It’s a cyberpunk point and click style adventure where your friend Hayden has been kidnapped and with the assistance of Turing, the world’s first truly sentient AI you must track him down. It’s got some really good characters that I love, and also Jess is in the game.

Jess is complicated. She’s a hybrid (undergone gene therapy that essentially means she’s part cat now) in a world that is bigoted against hybrids, and she doesn’t like you the player character. I can imagine all the discourse about the game is about this character and how awful she is for not liking you. I don’t dislike her for that, she’s valid and has valid reasons I just wish I could leave her alone like she wants. At one point you have to ask her for a favour and you get two conversation options. One is a cat pun (essentially a bigoted joke she’s going to hate) and the other is overfamiliarity (which she’s obviously going to hate). Either option will get her to angrily divulge her entire backstory at you, and I’d rather allow her the privacy. This game gives me social anxiety. It doesn’t help that if I pick the conversation options that feel most natural to me she insists I’m being a suck up and trying to be manipulative, and if I pick the more neutral conversational options that she’s fine with I feel like I’m actually being manipulative. 

There’s also parts like where the obvious villain of the game shows up, looking obviously like a villain, being a fucking CEO, being extremely super coincidentally in the same hospital room as you but with a connection to your missing friend and while you do get to say that you don’t trust him, I felt like I was being chided by the game for noping out of that conversation as fast as possible. And another part where you’re preparing for the endgame you’re having a conversation with this guy and he invites himself along and there’s so many options you can click on like ‘i don’t trust this guy’ ‘this seems like a bad idea’ but Turing and the plot itself just keep saying ‘but you gotta’ ‘we need information this guy can provide’. And not to be nitpicky but he doesn’t actually provide any information we didn’t already have. All he does is fiddle with your zapper and then betray you. Granted that the villainous monologue he gets at the end is pretty interesting and a good moment but it’s so frustrating when it feels so contrived that he’s there. Like what if you turned him down but he followed you into the facility, ambushing you at the exact same point.

It’s a game that has some really good characters, humour (i especially like the game long running joke that is the spoiled milk), and some really great moments, but the bits that don’t click for me really rub me the wrong way.

Rating: High highs and major irritations. Pretty damn good with some big caveats.

28. Peyton’s Post-Op Visits *

A very short and cute visual novel that is very reminiscent of npckc’s A Year of Springs series. This game follows a pair of trans men as they rekindle their friendship. It talks about some trans masculine experiences in a very approachable way and is generally light in tone.

Rating: A nice little experience.

29. Touch Theory *

A short visual novel about a mad scientist and his new lab assistant, maybe, and the slow development of their relationship as they get to know one another and reassess their relationship. 

Rating: An hour’s worth of fun.

30. One Just Night *

A short but sweet visual novel set in a world where everyone recieves a prophecy to guide them from a very young age. Our Lady of Possibility (Billie for short) resents her incredibly vague prophecy and is forced to spend time with the one person who might be able to provide her guidance; her arch rival Seeker of a Just Night. She has just one day to convince Just Night to help her and maybe build something new between them.

I love this one. Excellent worldbuilding, excellent character design. A short but engaging story that I got emotionally invested in.

Rating: Excellent, probably my favourite game of the month.

31. Please Touch The Artwork

Please, Touch The Artwork is a little puzzle game based on interacting with abstract artwork based on different art styles, or um maybe just different paintings by Piet Mondrian. Each of the styles has a different gameplay mechanic, and tells a different narrative with varying degrees of success.

Der Stijl (the style as depicted above) is the most effective in both narrative and mechanics. The narrative tells a seven days of creation story illustrated by adding new colours, new mechanics for you to play with. The puzzles are about trying to replicate the painting by adding colour and lines in the sequence they are given to you. As the elements increase it gets pretty challenging.

This is also the only style where, if you go to the gallery (i.e. the level select screen) you’ll be given information about the style. It’s kind of a shame the other galleries don’t have anything like that. It’s in trying to write the little synopsis about this game that I realized that I don’t know if the other galleries are based on art styles or individual paintings. I feel like there was a missed opportunity here to be a little bit more educational.

Boogie Woogie (based on the paintings Broadway Boogie Woogie and Victory Boogie Woogie (maybe more? idk)) are still engaging puzzles but the narrative of this one lost me. It’s about two beings which fit perfectly together, Boogie and Woogie, and you guide them to each other. As the stages go by this becomes more and more difficult to do. The problems I have with this narrative, well one of them that I had was why the blue square that bounces you backwards was called Broadway and why the diamond shape that Boogie has an affair with was called Victory. I guess I now have the answer to that now at least.

The other thing was that by the end it seems as though the narrative was metaphorical and about racism, and I really struggle to make sense of it. It’s likely a problem on my end but I feel like someone just pointed at a beachball and said ‘thats a metaphor for pollution’ and they may be right but i don’t feel like I’ve been given enough context to parse this metaphor correctly. This game is already interpreting very abstract paintings, to then try to build an extra layer of metaphor on top of itself is a difficulty.

The last style is New York (based on the painting New York City (and maybe more?) and it’s a series of very slow mazes with a narrative about leaving a loved one behind and being lost in a big city. It was pretty rough.

Rating: Neat little thing, some good puzzles, skip the New York City gallery.

32. Hourglass

This is one of those puzzle games where you can make a time clone of yourself. That’s essentially an entire genre. The puzzles in this one are pretty good though. They are mostly logisitical puzzles, rather than explicitly timing puzzles. It has a nice slow ramp up of difficulty, and by the end some of the puzzles have become quite complex, or require some serious consideration as to how to the sequence of events you need to pull off. The story is that you play Aywa, who has come to these undiscovered ruins looking for her father who went missing, and as you go through you find environmental detail that tells you of the history of this place.

33. Destiny Fails Us: A New Life *

I wanted to date this girl, but the only dateable options were boys with names like Greg or Brian or Dave or something.

A couple of downsides upfront: this game is abusive parent apologia, and exclusively heteroromantic.

But there are some aspects I liked. It’s pretty neat that the protagonist is canonically ace and that’s just a fact of the story. And I liked the simple artstyle, though it doesn’t always work, most notably when your dog is levitating at waist height next to someone. And I liked the relationship the protagonist has with her friends. It’s also pretty nice that, should you end up not going to the big valentine’s day dance with anyone (like i did) it’s not treated as a failure, instead you get a pretty nice scene where a bunch of your friends all spend time with you and it’s good.

Rating: Has some good aspects, but not for me.

34. Pebble Witch *

A nice little game where you play as a witch, explore a little coastline and lend a listening ear to the rocks and stones, and have a crush on your teacher. A nice little chill experience. I really like the writing for the rocks, it does a really good job of communicating this strange other perspective. It’s a very simple game but it is all it needs to be.

Rating: A nice chill experience.

35. Saving You From Yourself *

(publically accessible in browser)

A very short interactive narrative about gatekeeping trans medicine. It’s a short snapshot of the hopelessness of waiting to transition. It is simple in aesthetic and writing, but that just aids it to feel more emotionally vulnerable.

Rating: Beautiful in its vulnerability, but deeply bleak.

36. A Potion For Chamomile *

A nice little visual novel with a playful tone. Chamomile has a special potion recipe that will permanently turn her into a girl, and she needs the help of Lavender, a reclusive witch, in order to make it. Together they go on an adventure, and maybe make friends along the way. It’s a cute little story with themes of trans identity and disability.

Rating: Half an hour’s worth of cute silly fun.

37. Passpartout: The Starving Artist

This is a neat little game about painting, and trying to support yourself in art. It’s actually kind of an interesting experience playing it as I went from painting whatever silly thing sprung into my mind to trying to discern the desires of the different potential buyers, to the point where I did start feeling like a sellout. The second painting I drew was of this big red abstract angel and everyone hated it so much that drawing representations of this angel became my most pervasive thematic motif. That, eggs and kermits.

Rating: Really neat little experience.

38. When Aster Falls *

A burnt out succubus is surprised to find her latest assigned target is asexual. This is the lesbian ace romance I wanted from Destiny Fails Us. The characters are really cute and their chemistry is great. Just a really good time.

Rating: Fun and sweet.

39. HONEYPOT *

(publicly accessible in browser version available)

Short erotic game about being stranded on a very horny alien planet. Transformation and erotic mind control themes. It can be a little difficult to discern the exact consequences of any given decision, but at the end you are given the option to select and see any of the other endings you wish.

Rating: Half an hour’s worth of kinky fun.

40. Good Morning Hon *

An extremely short and ambiguous narrative about a lesbian couple, pleasant domesticity and a feeling of something being wrong. There are horror implications but everything is very open to interpretation.

Rating: Neat but not really my genre.

41. The Looker

A free to play parody of The Witness (2016). I was a little hesitant with this one, primarily because it describes itself as “full of puzzles that will frustrate and annoy you” and i immediately got the vibe that this going to be a particularly snide game. I liked The Witness a lot. It is beautiful, it has interesting puzzles that teach you the core set of rules which the puzzles operate without ever telling you those rules outright. And it does a thing that i love where once you have learned the language of the puzzles you start seeing them everywhere. The whole world suddenly is constructed of puzzles you couldn’t see until you know how to look for them. It’s really cool.

The Looker is I think an affectionate parody. It is certainly a very well informed parody. It does very specific nods, from the yellow box that projects a beam of light to the live action cinematic ending that show that it gets its source material. It pokes fun at the pretension of the game, opting to be a much sillier even in its puzzle design. It too has some rules to learn, one primary rule and one rule that is taught in one set of puzzles and is used to unlock the final puzzle of the game. It’s a game that’s absolutely happy to just throw away the rules if it thinks it would make a puzzle funnier though and that’s consistent with its tone overall. 

Rating: A good natured and enjoyable parody, with some interesting puzzle concepts of its own. Worth playing if you enjoyed The Witness.

42. Baise Lesbienne! *

A short game where you must explore your room and find the strapon harness and dildo for your Madame. Unfortunately it’s only available in french and I’m going to pretend I understand enough French naturally and didn’t painstaking type every sentence in this game into google translate. It’s very cute, with nice flirting and teasing between the characters.

Rating: Cute. Probably even better if you speak the language the game is in.

[queergamesbundle]

The Queer Halloween Stories bundle is back and open to submissions now! We're not related -- just fans -- so check them out and submit your scary projects and any questions you have through their itchio page:

[dcsart]

Hey! It's the last week to support the Queer Games Bundle! The aim of this bundle is simple: get queer devs paid! It's full of a lot of fun work, so I hope you'll consider checking it our or at least spreading the world.

Here’s the link to buy the regular edition!

Here’s the link to buy the Pay-What-You-Can edition!