LGBT in game jams #1 – The Legend of Gaymak: Queer Awakening

The path to accepting my orientation wasn’t long at all. However, finally getting into creating games with queer themes came exceptionally late. Why? The reason is trivial – while growing up I just didn’t stumble upon this kind of titles. In addition, surrounded by a rather male dominated company in the RPG Maker scene, I automatically assumed that, all in all, such a combination probably didn’t make much sense. Even more so was my pleasant surprise, as a certain production showed me, that I don’t have to limit the inclusion of such themes in my works at all. Enthused by this title, I returned to the Polish community (but this time I didn’t create a separate persona for gamedev purposes – I appear under the same nickname by which you can find me on social media).

Futher successful discoveries are convincing me that RPG Maker and LGBT can be very fond of each other. What’s more, there are a lot of game jams being made whose main purpose is to portray my community in a positive way. This series is being created in order to check whether or not a topic as broad as LGBT representation could work as the theme for game jam projects.

The Legend of Gaymak: Queer Awakening

To kick off the series I’ll take the most recent edition of Gaymak – a regular event hosted by RPGMaker.net in late June. The competition period wasn’t chosen without a reason. The month of June is known in LGBT community as Pride Month to honor the memory of Stonewall riots. The mentioned event was the catalyst for many changes as people became more vocal in demanding equal treatment from the rest of society. I encourage you to check Wikipedia page, focusing on this event’s role in our rainbow history.

This year’s edition has a rather long name: The Legend of Gaymak: Queer Awakening. It’s an obvious reference to the SNES edition of Zelda with the smuggled theme of the edition: queer awakening. To be honest, I am not sure how to translate this term to Polish language. It’s more of a realization than a literal awakening: when the characters understood who they are and, by this, they belong into LGBT community.

Work on the competition games begun on June 20th, and the working-time was 15 days. In the end, 4 contest games have been submitted:

• Fateless Two, Faithless Thee: Interlude (Marmalade i CrazyBabi)
• Kale’s Adventure (lavendersiren)
• Wakenights (Craze)
• Cronies The Game (Megasocky)

Fateless Two, Faithless Thee: Interlude

To get started, let’s take a look at Fateless Two, Faithless Thee: Interlude. Iora is a harpy who falls with a (literal) bang into the Sage’s mansion. Her beloved doesn’t regain consciousness, so it must be symptoms of the curse. These is no time to waste – a specialist is needed to reverse the effects of the evil spell. To her frustration, she meets a strange character who, instead of providing urgent attention, introduces Iora to the tale of sacrifice, love and self-discovery.

In this case, it’s a full-blown kinetic novel. The Marmalade and CrazyBabi Team has limit gameplay to a minimum. As players, we are merely viewers of the events and does not have any influence on its course. We are only given control of Iora in order to move around from room to room. There we are encountering various cutscenes that revolve around the character of Amiore. Her story is a classic interpretation of the main theme – the classic „but w-we’re both girls!” yuri theme. This is why the 10-minute playtime works to its advantage – in a longer game, such a slow process of unveiling abou the heroine’s feelings could frustrate the player.

As for the story structure itself, it seems to have got everything covered. I was particularly curious to know more about Iora and her relationship with Ry, whose role in this title has been kept to a minimum. I’ll get to see them again when I am gonna overview the 2011 edition of Gaymak, for which Marmalade created the first contest game dedicated to this couple.

Check out Fateless Two, Faithless Thee: Interlude game page

Kale’s Adventure

In Kale’s Adventure, you play as a fourteen-year-old boy, the only remaining survivor of his kind. While lying in a hospital bed, he decides to confesses all his emotions to Makuhita. Unfortunately, the Pokemon responds rather perfunctorily, thus not helping the title Kale to work through the loss of his loved ones. Sleep appears to be the only chance for a momentary relief…. however, the hero never expected he would wake up in a completely bizarre place.

When I reached for the second title from the entry list, I didn’t pay attention to its genre. Only midway through the game did I realize that lavendersiren took the theme of the contest quite literally. Certainly, since there’s an obvious Zelda reference in the game jam’s title, how could you not expect an ABS-style combat! As much as I’m not a fan of this kind of battle systems in RPG Maker games, once I got the weapons, none of the monsters posed a challenge for me. Opening most of doors by simply bashing them with a spear also brought a smile to my face. The skill received along with your armament was borderline worthless – well, at least I didn’t encounter a situation where it was worth utilizing. The game also won’t let you die just like that – after losing all HP, you have the option to return to the starting point without losing plot progress.

Such a low difficulty level combined with the graphic style and the age of the main character suggests that the game is aimed at a younger audience. This ties in nicely with the queer themes found in Kale’s Adventure. The game focuses on the protagonist’s story of self-discovery in a simple, yet endearing way. Kale frequently compares himself to the comically stereotypical antagonist, Dylan, as he doesn’t want to have anything in common with him. It wasn’t until meeting the rest of the crew that made Kale realize how diverse the queer community is. Discovering a different orientation within himself doesn’t change anything about him as a person – he’s still Kale, a boy wanting to reclaim his world and lost family. If I had only a single game from this edition to recommend, I would eagerly point you to lavendersiren’s entry.

Check out Kale’s Adventure game page

Wakenights

Playing as Drake, you’re tasked with rescuing the princess from the tower. Setting off on the mission, you bring along a trusted team to keep your supplies stocked during the journey. The vendor’s brother, Gains, willingly tags along with you deeper into the tower. Your other companion, Lucille, however, begins to doubt the point of the assignment more and more with each floor… Are you sure you can trust everybody in such situation? Is it really a good idea to take on every new team member you meet?

Craze has opted for a classic RPG format in Wakenights. Expect random battles, spacious maps with a generous number of chests and even larger amount of time spent on conversations between characters. The level of gameplay itself is rather uneven. The beginning is frankly yawn inducing. The skirmishes boil down to Enter-mashing and you only really gain access to better equipment after defeating the first boss. However, after a couple of floors the combat becomes a lot less tedious, enough to make you warm up to the game – successively gained skills and their distribution among the heroes allows you to decide on some interesting strategies. Frequent changes in team composition forcing you to experiment in key battles is also a big plus. That being said, the ending left me a little unsatisfing – the final boss turned out to be a symbolic conclusion to the story, succumbing to death by basically a single ability. The sheer size of the team also didn’t allow its members to spread their wings sufficiently. Thus, plot twist itself didn’t resonate as strongly as I had expected. It did, however, interest me enough to look at other games from Craze in the future.

Check out Wakenights game page

Cronies The Game

Juno gets a ride from his friend to a nearby restaurant. As they talk, you can see Juno’s excitement mixed with nervousness. No wonder – the boy has an important meeting coming up. He is about to go out to dinner with his partner, Patchy. On top of that, he’s meeting Patchy’s parents tonight! Problem is, Juno’s not good at talking to newly met people…. What’s more, Patchy hasn’t let him know what to pay attention while small talking. This leaves Juno with the important task of trying to put his best foot forward without having to prepare much.

The last entry, Cronies the Game, was a surprise of sorts. The inconspicuous screenshots don’t give away just how creative the use of RPG Maker 2003’s default combat system has been. There are two „battles” to take part in, where you have to choose between different ways of responding to your interlocutor. Much potential lies in such a system. Unfortunately, there’s no incentive to experiment with answers here, as the conversations with Patchy’s parents were limited to choosing 1-2 options from a whole list of suggestions. Also, in my opinion, the relationship between Juno and Patchy could have more room for development. There is a certain lack of believability in their characters, which were so delicately drawn. Still, for the first game to be released by Megasocky, the production value comes off quite well. Moreover, the use of footage from a well-known commercial to show the car ride definitely made this production stick in my mind for a long time!

Check out Cronies The Game game page

Summary

That’s all for today! I’d say that the choice of theme was a big plus – queer awakening is, on one hand, easy to interpret, and on the other it gives the creators room to shine. Unfortunately, the competition turnout resulted in little more than two hours of gameplay for the public to play. It’s a shame that, in the end, only a few people took up the gauntlet.

What are your thoughts on the series of articles? I really enjoyed writing this overview, so I’m looking forward to getting a closer look at other editions of queer gamejams organized by RPGMaker.net (there are 5 more waiting for me at the moment).

Is there a game that especially caught your attention? If so – please let us know about it in the comments!

Marta „puniek” Płoszaj

The original article was translated by Michu and edited by Axer.