You should play Dys4ia
newgrounds.com
If you have a few spare minutes this weekend, and if you can approach gender identity matters like a grown-up, I highly recommend playing Dys4ia, a new Flash game from Anna “Auntie Pixelante” Anthropy (Mighty Jill Off).
It’s a lovely, personal tale full of microgame snapshots from the transgender game designer’s experience starting hormone replacement therapy. It’s inspiring, not in just the sense of it being a story we can admire, but in that it’s so personal and masterfully executed, that the creative parts in you feel compelled to make something just as real and powerful, something capable of reaching out and changing someone’s perspective or life.
I can’t wait to read her upcoming book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (releases on March 20).
See also: More Auntie Pixelante works
dys4ia
newgrounds.coma trans-genred game experience
This is probably old news to many, but this is a really cool thing!
dys4ia
newgrounds.comdys4ia is an autobiographical game about the period in my life when i started hormone replacement therapy. it’s a story about me, and is certainly not meant to represent the experience of every trans person.
this is a five minute game meant to communicate the hardships of an mtf transition. worth a play if you’ve got the time. very immersive and trippy.
dys4ia
newgrounds.comThis game is absolutely wonderful. It not only shows what games are capable of, but dys4ia demonstrates the creator’s experience in such a way that I don’t think writing does quite as well. As she notes at the beginning of the game, it isn’t representative of every trans person’s life, but I think it is a great starting point if you don’t quite understand what transgender means. It’s quite short to complete, it’s accessible, and it should be played by you.
Freeware Review - Mainichi
Mainichi is a short game created by respected critic/journalist Mattie Brice which, in her own words, “helps communicate daily occurrences that happen in my life as a mixed transgender woman.” It’s a bit like Dys4ia mixed with Every Day the Same Dream. As much as I try to avoid “It’s like Game X crossed with Game Y,” occasionally it’s the most expedient way to describe the game to those unfamiliar with it, and here the description fits. From Dys4ia, there is the use of game mechanics to convey very personal experiences with what Anna Anthropy called “gender bullshit” and from Every Day there is the repeated day structure with the ability to change the way things play out with your gameplay choices.
But luckily, in combining the two games, she was able to retain most of what was good about each. The narrative is very personal and affecting, and there are a handful of meaningful choices you can make. The game was made in RPG Maker by a single person using community assets and no programming and it shows, but it’s a worthwhile exploration of using game mechanics to say something you have a hard time saying any other way.
woww i just found out about dys4ia and now i want everyone to play it it will only take you 10 minutes and your life will be better after
it’s about a trans woman’s experience with starting hormone replacement therapy and it’s cute and colourful and sad and happy and it’s. perfect. go play it
(seizure warning applies though)
Play: dys4ia
newgrounds.comdys4ia is an autobiographical game about the period in my life when i started hormone replacement therapy. it’s a story about me, and is certainly not meant to represent the experience of every trans person.
game by ANNA ANTHROPY
Dys4ia
newgrounds.comAn autobiographical video game by a trans* woman about her experience transitioning.
You should have seen my face when she said she had a girlfriend.
<3
Freeware recommendations
From time to time, I come across some free indie games that don’t elicit a full review, but that I think are worth playing nontheless. Today, I have three, all of which can be played in your browser by clicking the links:
Freedom Bridge - This is a (very) short game about the so-called “Freedom Bridge” in Korea, a bridge over which flowed POWs and injured soldiers during the Korean War. You painfully guide your square avatar through a series of barbed wire placements, hoping to reach the bridge, and freedom, before…well, you’ll see. It only takes about two minutes to play, so get to it.
Closure - This game is basically a puzzle platformer, although much more heavy on the puzzles than the platforming. This world is mostly pitch black, with just a few spots of white light. The main gimmick is that you can only stand on what is illuminated. If you step on a shadow, you fall through and have to start over. You can carry balls of light around and drop them where you want to manipulate the environment as you choose. It starts to get much more difficult than that, with multiple light sources that move, and some that disappear when you get close. It was ultimately too frustrating for me to finish, but it’s definitely a unique idea, and the art style is pretty neat. There are a lot of levels here, and it is the longest game in this post by far.
Personal Trip to the Moon - This is a game that claims to be “about dysphoria” but apart from the main character (who appears to be male) seeing a female reflection in a mirror in the beginning, you’d be hard pressed to see the connection. In this game, you fly from Earth to the moon, and meet up with some astronauts whose lunar lander is busted and missing several parts. You then fly around, gathering all the needed parts to help them get home to Earth. The flying is a lot of fun, and the animation is cool, but you can see your destination with the push of a button, so any challenge or exploration is lost. Ultimately, I think this game is worth a play for the art and score alone. Each time you take off into the air, an interesting and epic piece of music starts to play and build up, and it makes your flight seem much cooler than it probably really is. Certainly worth the 5-10 minutes you’ll spend on it, and maybe the story will hit home with you more than it did for me.
you should play dys4ia
newgrounds.comit’s an autobiographical (not for me) game about gender identity
“dys4ia is an autobiographical game about the period in my life when i started hormone replacement therapy. it’s a story about me, and is certainly not meant to represent the experience of every trans person.”
A Mile in Her Shoes: Teaching Transphobia through Video Games
borderhouseblog.com… I made a last-minute change in the syllabus and took my students to Emory’s Center for Interactive Teaching (ECIT) so that they could play Anna Anthropy’s dys4ia, Merritt Kopas’ Lim and Mattie Brice’s Mainichi—three accessible games that allow players to experience various facets of transgender experience, or at least a specific subset of transgender experience.
In sharing my students’ responses with you, I hope to contribute to an ongoing affirmation of the utility of games as educational tools (see, for example, this article by Merritt Kopas). My students had meaningful experiences with these games; the lessons they learned from playing dys4ia, Lim and Mainichi went beyond what I could teach them in a lecture format alone. The interactivity of the video game medium, I would argue, played a significant role in adding this depth to our lesson on transphobia. As my student Caitlin put it, “[the games] gave me a unique perspective that I don’t think I could have achieved any other way.” The interactive format of the class also required me to shift the way I thought about my role as an educator when teaching with games.
I’ll share my students’ reactions to dys4ia, Lim and Mainichi in turn, highlighting both common themes and exceptional insights. If you haven’t played these three games, I recommend that you do so before reading the rest of this post.
