UNSIGHTED developers reflect on queer experiences within their work
UNSIGHTED from developers Studio Pixel Punk is an action-adventure Metroidvania, one that follows protagonist Alma and her quest against time in the city of Arcadia.
It’s a game that has quickly become beloved among LGBTQ+ players due to its queer cast of characters, and a compelling narrative that keeps you sucked in right from the beginning. Our own review of UNSIGHTED describes its core as being ‘bright and powerful like few games out there.’ The point is: Studio Pixel Punk clearly have a winner on its hands.
However, much like many pieces of queer media out there, there is plenty of angst and death and doom for our queer protagonists and their loved ones. In a piece by Eurogamer, Oisin Kuhnke describes how in spite of all this they wanted to strive for a fairly happy ending in order to combat the narrative that all queer experiences must end in tragedy.
The developers of UNSIGHTED were also aware of how tragedy often plagues queer stories, however, in their interview with Eurogamer they reflected on the game and the impossibility of capturing every single queer experience in a single piece of work.
“We don’t think it’s possible to capture every queer experience with a single work, and we don’t attempt to do it,” Fernanda Dias from Studio Pixel Punk tells Eurogamer. “We tried to write something that reflects our own experience, which is varied in and of itself, and that indeed has a lot of sombre moments, but it’s also a story about happiness, about moments big and small and even about catharsis.”
As more queer and marginalized developers begin to share more of their own stories and experiences, it has often meant exposing it to consumers whose own queer experiences may not match up. In the case of the controversy surrounding Boyfriend Dungeon, for example, one of the complaints was that the game was trying to reinforce ‘corrective rape’ and ‘stalking’ with the character of Eric. For some queer players, this knocked their perception of wanting a game that wasn’t harmful to them, their queer experiences and queer characters.
However, the controversy surrounding Boyfriend Dungeon and queer games in general opened up another question: shouldn’t non-heterosexual developers be able to tell messy, queer stories that aren’t just rainbows and butterflies? Studio Pixel Punk’s interview with Eurogamer reflects the ongoing debate with a simple answer: yes, because everyone’s experience is different.
UNSIGHTED is available to play on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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