Pride At Play Exhibition Celebrates Queer Voices In Video Games

Pride At Play is an upcoming exhibition hosted by Pride Amplified as part of the Sydney World Pride festival that casts a spotlight on queer games made in the Oceania and Asia Pacific regions.

From February 21 to March 4, 2023, 22 video and tabletop games will be available to play at the Sydney College of the Arts Project Space, with an additional nine games available as part of an online showcase. All the games being exhibited are made by various LGBTQIA+ creators and feature a myriad of queer stories.

The event is curated by Dr Xavier Ho, who had this to say about Pride At Play:

“When you look at mainstream games out there, queer characters receive a lot of attention for a narrow slice of representation. We created Pride at Play to be an amplifier for games that are designed with authentic, purposeful, and thoughtful queer representation.”

Pride At Play will showcase big hits such as the two-time BAFTA award-winning puzzle game Unpacking by Brisbane-based Witch Beam, as well as the 2022 Apple Arcade Game of the Year winner Wylde Flowers by Melbourne-based Studio Drydock.

The full list of games that will be available to play at Pride At Play are as follows:

Pride At Play video games

• Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock)
• Kinder World (Lumi Interactive)
• Unpacking (Witch Beam)
• Mima and Nina’s Chocolate Workshop (npckc and sdhizumi)
• Lilypad Days (Emma Pretty, Joshua Braines-Mead and Billie)
• Hard Lads (Robert Yang)
• stand up (Rae White)
• So, About Last Night… (Elissa Black)
• That Boy Is A Monstr (Sav Emmett Wolfe)
• userID (Hua Chai)
• s/f/wønderland (Hua Chai)
• The Beat: A Glam Noir Adventure (Up Multimedia)
• Queer & Chill (Team Spicy Bubble)
• Kaiju Noir (Jamie Kaiju Marriage, Lluis Abadias and Dani Bilham)
• Small Town Emo (Fnife Games)
• Please Be Happy (Studio Élan)

Online only

• Wrong Number (WitPOP)
• Jubilee (gayleviticus)
• Foodomina (Irini Melas, John Engstrom, Jason Keen and Aris Diacolabrianos)
• Red Handed (Isabelle White, Bailey Gibbons, Guriqbal Singh Majhail, Jim Ouk and Morgan Ainsley)

Pride At Play tabletop games

• Pretzel After Dark (Timothy Snowdon)
• Make Our Own Heaven (Reizor)
• Our Mundane Supernatural Life (Storybrewers Roleplaying)
• TOMBS: Toot on my balls skeleton (Swamphen)
• I’M A TRANS MAN AND I’M HERE TO FUCK (TRANS BODIES ARE SEXY) (Logan Timmins, Uncle Vlad, Nimael and Ro Feld)
• LOGAN: An Autobiographical Tabletop Game (Logan Timmins)

Online only

• Navathem’s End (Sinta Posadas and Pam Punzalan)
• Small Orbits (Timothy Snowdon)
• Triangulate (Timothy Snowdon)
• Journey to You (Logan Timmins)
• Safe Place (Logan Timmins)

On top of this, the Pride At Play programming also includes LGBTQIA+ friendly events, including introductory TTRPG sessions, board game social nights, and a queer game dev talk panel. All events will be free to the public via online registration.

The Pride At Play exhibition, on the other hand, is a free drop-in event, meaning you can simply just go and take a look! For more information on the Pride At Play exhibition, you can head over to the Pride Amplified event page.