Below is how my game Private Cathedrals was written up for the itch selects bundle. I'm honored to be part of it but was surprised at how my game was written about, not in a bad way but in a "Huh?" way and I want to talk about why.

I think most queer people who have had eyes on the game will share my confusion. The game doesn't ask you to play two people trying to keep their relationship a secret, rather it asks you to play two people who want to speak of their love but understand the danger.

There is a subtle difference but one important to the game's design and my understanding of queerness. Queer people love each other, live with each other, sleep with each other, mourn each other in ways not obvious from a position for straightness. That's the same a not hiding.

It's easy to see how a game about navigating a world where obviousness often (if not always) means violence might be mistaken for being about secrecy. But actually it's about how whole swaths of life and desire can be erased my heteronormative understanding.

I write in the introduction to this game about how we understand queerness history and how our desire to have un arguable queer stories can cause us to dismiss queer history. In my game I ask for your sympathy for unlabeled or inexplicit queerness. I think its worth a read.

The game isn't about secrecy. its about wrestling with erasure and with the fact that some parts of your life and love might never be understood. I ask you to roll on this table before you write; sometimes you write a letter knowing it will not survive because you are in love.

Here's the game for those who are curious! https://roswellian.itch.io/together-we-write-private-cathedrals

bumping this thread because what I write about here is important to me, take a second to read it