Meet ‘Pride Run’, the fun and camp rhythm RTS about running your own Pride Parade
Pride Run is an indie rhythm game meets RTS that is all about experiencing Pride parades from around the world. In it, you press buttons in rhythmic timing to a pumping queer club remix, micro-manage bears, drag queens, transfolk and twinks in the crowd, defend against homophobic attacks and celebrate love.
So basically, it’s a game that screams gay rights.
It’s an unapologetically queer game on all fronts, and, according to CEO Ivan Venturi, came about from his love for his local Pride parade. One day, Venturi was driving home from work and came upon a radio segment celebrating International Coming Out Day. He listened to first-hand accounts of young Italian teens coming to terms with who they were as they came out to their friends and family, all at an incredibly young age.
Hearing their stories, he was reminded of the last time he was at pride with his family. Surrounded by love, inclusiveness, wonderfully camp music and beautiful queer people proudly marching to the drum of their own beats, he could feel the sense of freedom and sexual liberty from the crowds, free from oppression and years of alienation and miserably not accepting themselves.
Pride is a celebration of being who you are within a community of people who accept you with open arms and wigs, and Venturi wanted to help these kids see that. Looking at the kind of representation that was available to these questioning teens and the way queer culture was explored in games, he decided to make a game that encapsulates all the glitter, glam and gorgeous nature of Pride and its history.
Playing the game at Gamescom, we met with Venturi, art director Giacomo Guccinelli and music producer – and half of queer electronic duo Hardton – Mauro Copeta, and can safely say, the game is hella gay and fun. Gameplay can be essentially boiled down to two modes: Vanilla, a mode designed for people who want to experience Pride and the joyous energy and excitement of it via a simple rhythm game, which has you pressing buttons to the beats of a pumping pride album akin to a remix of gay club music by Copeta, and Play Hard, a tactical RTS alternative.
In Play Hard, you create your own pride parade from a variety of units that represent all colours of the rainbow, each with their own stats, abilities, and weaknesses. From what we saw, there were drag queens, drag kings, intersex, bisexuals, bears, otters, cubs, veteran gays, daddies, chasers, twinks, butch queens and more. There are also hero classes, powerful leaders from each level and real-world people from queer history who have special powers, including the twerking ass-clapping magical girl drag queen on par with Lizzo’s iconic cosplay; a shirtless Russian woman with “FUCK PUTIN” painted on her belly; and a beautifully bara dad who poses like a BDSM Zangief.
Moving them in real-time, you micromanage these units around the parade to defend from homophobic attacks, invite people from the crowd and avoid traffic, ending each level with a 2D arcade brawl with a handful of combo abilities at your disposal, punching and throwing objects like a boomerang for the Australian hero like a Saturday morning cartoon. And, hammering the importance of inclusiveness and love, when you win, you convince them to celebrate love instead of hate.
It’s a wonderful message told through some challenging gameplay, and while I found myself struggling to micromanage each of my units and moving my bears in to protect the intersex and twinks in my posse, I couldn’t help but think of how I’ve never seen this kind of representation in a game before, and how important it might be for questioning LGBT folks around the world.
As Copeta told me, places that are more LGBT+ friendly like San Francisco and London feature fewer homophobes and more people you can have join you from the crowd, while places like Moscow and rural America will pit you against waves of homophobic communities and make it difficult to easily march. Just as Pride Run is about letting you experience the joyous experience of marching in a Pride parade, it’s also about educating you on queer culture and history, both its incredible and camp sides and harsh realities.
Next to the big AAA games I played at Gamescom, Pride Run stuck out as a wonderfully camp and fun picture of queer culture and history. Growing up in a relatively queer-friendly society like Sydney with our own pride equivalent Mardi Gras a televised event, it’s nice to see my community and queer culture from around the world reflected in a game. But for the young queers hearing about their friends coming out and questioning whether to do so, it might give them a bit of hope and a fun distraction. Now all we need is a Carly Rae Jepsen hero with a sword to join them.
You’ll be able to participate in your own virtual Pride parade when the game launches sometime later this year on Steam.
Are you hyped for Pride Run? Check out our other reviews and previews.
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