Interactive gay love stories

Interactive gay love stories are a great way to explore LGBTQ characters in gay interactive fiction games. However, it can be tricky to create these relationships without resorting to stale stereotypes or rehashing old tropes. Typically, gay love stories in video games are read as power fantasies that the player character achieves by surmounting a series of gamified obstacles. But gay love can subvert these power fantasies by inviting the player to question their own biases.

Developed by Toby Fox, Undertale is an interactive boys' love story game that defies the typical rules of its genre. Its monsters don't represent a mysterious, unknowable other; instead they serve as commentary and representation for common issues of humanity, such as depression, anxiety and bullying. Examples include Whimsun, a frightened and painfully apologetic monster; Woshua, a germophobic so obsessed with cleanliness that dirty jokes disgust them; and Loox, an arrogant bully who tsunderes over their own sensitivity.

The romance between Undyne and Alphys, two NPCs in the gay interactive fiction game's world of monsters, is another notable aspect of the gay interactive love story. Though their relationship isn't explicitly stated, it reaches a narrative boiling point as one of the key elements to unlocking the gay love game's true pacifist ending. Unlike Life is Strange, which tried to force its lesbian square peg into a tragic catastrophe context, Undertale contextualizes this relationship in a positive way that benefits the player.

Gay interactive fiction games

Created by Leighton Gray and Vernon Shaw, two members of the wildly popular gay love Game Grumps let's-play gaming-vlogging group (also known as LP) and a self-described "game development studio", Dream Daddy is a surprisingly unlikely hit rocketing up the Steam charts. The gay interactive love stories game, a dating simulator that allows players to romance hunky dads from a neighborhood block, has birthed thriving communities on Tumblr, AO3 and YouTube where fans stream playthroughs and create NSFW fan art.

These dads are not your stereotypical sexist, beer-guzzling, golfing patriarchs: They're loud, cat-print-shirt wearing, pierced and tatted, purple-haired, music-loving dads. Several of them, like secretly romantic Robert, friendly goth Damien and Joseph Christiansen, identify as queer. Those nuances make a difference to some players and could help shape the popular gay love story game's future. But to others, those details feel like tokenism. Dream Daddy is part of a growing trend of games marketed to fandom that present fantastical, hopeful depictions of male/male queerness for a largely female audience.

Interactive boys' love stories in games

Taking the gaming world by storm, Hades is an epic adventure that's also an interactive gay love story. The game retells the story of Achilles and Patroclus, a pair of lovers who were separated in death. Achilles was fated to spend a hero's eternity in Elysium, but when he realized that his beloved Patroclus had been condemned to a life of eternal flames in Hecate's fires of Lethe, he made an agreement with Hades to save his lover.

As the god of the underworld, Hades ruled over all that lived beneath the Earth and governed death. He tended to the souls of the dead but paid little attention to things above ground, only occasionally punishing those who trespassed on his realm.

Hades both adheres to and incisively breaks from classical tradition. It's one of the only games with interactive gay love stories to depict an achronistically queer interpretation of Achilles and Patroclus, and it makes a point to include nonbinary and LGBTQIAP+ characters (like Dusa, who doesn't always use they/them pronouns). However, it still falls short in its representation of disabled people and its framing of beauty through a binary lens.

The Iron Bull, a huge barrel-chested Qunari warrior, doesn't look on love or romance the same way humans do. But if you flirt with him enough, he might eventually open up to you and start to show some genuine feelings.

Gay interactive love stories

Dragon Age: Inquisition's romance options aren't explicitly gay but they're definitely bisexual. That's not perfect but it's the best solution Bioware has been able to come up with for giving gay gamers a choice of gay or straight romances.

Inquisition also offers a more nuanced approach to romance than previous Dragon Age iterations and other Bioware interactive gay dating stories. For example, players can initiate flirtatious dialogue with non-player-characters including subjects their character cannot actually romance and all flirty romantic interactions are marked by a heart icon on the dialogue wheel. This makes it easy for players to intuit how much a companion likes them without having to check a gauge every time they talk. This is one of the most important aspects of the gay love story game's approach to romance.

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