What's your gender?
What's your gender?
"What's your gender?" was originally part of a "binary and beyond" themed game jam and developped in less than 36 hours.
"What's your gender?" takes the player on an adventure into a non-eucledian labyrinth, exploring terms and concepts related to gender and identity.
Controls
Move with WASD, Arrow Keys or Mouse
Jump (optional) with Space
LMB/E to interact
Gamepad support
Recommendations and Awards
Credits
Soundtrack Meekness by Kai Engel
Soundtrack (original jam release) Flawless by Ryan Andersen
Assets: 100% handmade by Pingu (Purplesloth Studio)
VA: Ente & Katze (Purplesloth Studio)
Research & Levellayout: Ente (Purplesloth Studio)
Code: fuchsi* and radow (Purplesloth Studio)
Shader: fuchsi* (Purple Sloth) special thanks to Ronja
Source
https://git.hemio.de/purpleSloth/antigender
(the working title was a play on 'Antichamber')
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Patch 1.2, some numbers and news!Oct 07, 2021
- Hotfix for 02/06/2021 PatchJun 04, 2021
- Happy Pride Month!Jun 01, 2021
- 'What's your gender?' Full ReleaseFeb 21, 2021
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Tech wise this is basically Antichamber. How did you pull that off in 36 hours?
I do notice some visual glitches so portals aren't actually seamless in the game world - however you still have a proper portal renderer in there. Unity comes with the feature now, or did you manage to build that in that little time?
Certainly looks impressive.
Actually: just checked the code - it seems like Unity has Camera objects that do the heavy part of the work. Still quite an achievement to get this in 36 hours. Well done!
There are a couple of different mechanics we use for the effects.
For one we spawn and despawn copies of each room in relative positions to the room the player is currently in based on triggers set in this room. This allows us to have rooms that would intersect with each other or repeat endlessly.
The portals work by placing a second camera in the same relative position to the "portal exit" that the player has to the "portal entrence", rendering it to a render texture and then use a custom shader to istead of cropping it onto the portal plane cutting out the part of the fullscreen texture that intersects with the portalplane.
The main problem with portals is that having multiple of them active at any given time can really drag down the performence so its key to deactivate them whenever they are not actually rendering anythign and avoid "portal loops".
For the queer room tunnell we project the player position onto a single axis and then rotate the room and its neighbours depending on a 180° Lerp with the projected player position as progress value.
The basic concepts arn't that hard to impliment in a limited amount of time (although the code is quite a bit messier than it needed to be due to the time constraints). It's the setting and testing of triggerboxes, anchorpoints etc. that takes most time. It should also be said that some of the rooms currently in the game were not present in the original jam release, but added later on.
Ah, you can spawn/despawn entire rooms in Unity. That of course helps and also allows some things to be done easier than the original Antichamber way (having native portals and enabling/disabling them at will).
Was rather curious as I was the one implementing the portal mechanics into DarkPlaces Quake engine + Xonotic and it was a lot harder there - well, none of these primitives were there though (except some existing engine code for rendering a scene in the same map to a texture which was used for water reflections). E.g. dynamically spawning entire rooms including objects is not possible even today, and the hacks that would allow sort of similar things are extremely slow as they would lose precomputed visibility information.
How I did it in the combination of DP + Xonotic was twofold: in DP I just provided "cameras" where game code can set the view origin of the camera, and in Xonotic I made all the other primitives (e.g. collision) aware of the portals.
In my game AAAAXY (which is 2D and thus I had no even remotely portal-capable engines available, but created my own) I went with a different way, to ensure portals have no glitches whatsoever; that way is however rather incompatible with multiplayer and thus I cannot generally recommend it. I basically decided to support portals in the tile loader itself and nowhere else, meaning everything else, including player movement, distance computations, tracing etc. work precisely the same whether portals are in the way or not. This approach may be applicable to 3D games as well, although as you describe portal tech in 3D is not particularly hard anyway, ESPECIALLY if given the primitives "Camera" and "copying rooms together" (in fact, with just copying rooms together and without cameras, you could already do portals the AAAAXY way and it will all be one render pass, although it may be slow to add/remove room parts at runtime and doing it like that everywhere also puts some annoying constraints).
While doing this, I also had the issue that third person portals are even more broken in general, as the typical way done in 3D engines only works for a first person view. To some extent this can be worked around, of course. What I ended up doing was introducing the same visibility mechanism as you know it from 3D games but applied to 2D - so anything the player cannot see is just black. Personally I got the idea from Among Us, but I must highlight https://alxwest.itch.io/kitakombs which discovered and released this tech independently on Itch before I finished my game.
There are a few ways to spawn/despawn full rooms in Unity. Given that this was a jam originally we took the simply road and made them all into prefabs, provided each room with a reference to each prefab that could spawn from it and the appropriate anchor points. The Trigger zones then call on the current Room to spawn/despawn them accordingly.
Similar things can be done by treating rooms as seperate scenes and spawnnign them additively, but this does not work as neatly with having several copies of them and a few other thigns we do.
I'm allways happy to see different solutions for implementing non-eucledian levels. Will take a look at the ones you mentioned for sure =)
Using similar mechanics in 2D is something I've always wanted to do but havn't gotten around to yet. I think this could be especially fun for sidescrollers, where having branching paths (other than having a bunch of background doors) can be a challenge.
- radow
BTW I think I forgot to mention - there is one way to do non-euclidean geometry in a 2D sidescroller without the visibility shadows that I did: if an entire screenful matches on the two ends of the portal, i.e. if overlaps are one screen away from the respective portal from which they are entered, then this can be done by transparently teleporting, as nothing on the screen would change during this.
A game that does this technique is none other than the original Super Mario Bros. in some of the castle levels (those where going a wrong path transparently brings you back to the start of the level). However in there the teleporting was not entirely transparent - they didn't clone some firebars to the destination side of the portal. This would have had an easy fix, of course; however due to how spawning works, it might have been tricky to put the "new" firebars in the same angle as the "old" ones, so this may be why they didn't.
ngl I was about to cry
it gave me literal shivers
Am i gonna cry lmao
yk as someone thats working towards discovering who they truly are this was great to have and i over all love it great job :>
Its great! It provides tons of information for people who aren't aware, or people who are questioning, great job! <3
pov: you just figured out your gender/sexuality and now your questioning yourself again lol
The use of environmental story-telling is wonderful. The display and shape of each room creates the atmosphere of a museum, and this makes sense as each room contains a new concept to do with gender and identity. This actually reminds me of an in-person sexuality museum I visited in Glasgow; It was so validating and comforting seeing our community presented in a space made for the retention of historically important knowledge. The Queer community has lost so much of our history throughout time because of the lack of acceptance within the general public. Even when we have been documented in popular history it's been from an outsider point of view. Sometimes it feels we have been made a spectacle, not something to be understood but instead observed. To hear us tell our own stories and for them to be kept in a museum and seen as experiences worthy of sharing and protecting is unlike anything I've ever seen, and here I see it again in this game. Games can create an interactive narrative, providing a space for queer stories and experiences to survive, be shared and retold. Making a queer game and displaying it is revolutionary, because it demonstrates how we will never be lost to history again. This game is important, thank you for making it.
I even sent it to a friend who was questioning their own identity and it helped them feel so much better.
five stars
Thank you for sharing your experience with the game. It's incredibly heartworming to hear that our game is able to evoke such reactions.
Also: The museum in glasgow you discribe sounds amazing and now we all wanna go there =]
<3
So this ain't the game's fault, just thought this was kinda funny. When I got to the "map" area, I saw there was a square called "Map"....well, I misunderstood this and thought it meant "MAPS" like the pedophiles. So it boggled my mind that this would be included here (Like, I was legit wondering wtf it would say about MAPS), so I had to go find it...Took me 10 minutes of pouring over the entire museum before I realized "Map" was just the name of the map room.....anyways great game, 5/5, I learned a lot of things I didn't know, and this game was not offensive at all thank goodness lol!!!
Loved it! Its a nice game and loveful! :D
Very nice game, love it
PD report: in euphoria, its written somtimes called, without the e, its a small thing but i thought it would be helpful :)
ah, and i dont know if its a bug, but music doesnt loop very well, it's like there's a minute of silence between the music loops
Hey pyay,
the minute of silence is intentonal, but thanks for bringing these bugs to our attention. We are about to ship a patch over the next two days and I'll see if I can include the spelling fix if it hadn't been caught yet =)
really good game :) im trans myself but still figuring out my gender so this is nice, it's very soothing and i love the music n all the colors and shapes!! controls were a bit wonky but it was a good experience <3 thank u for this game i love it alot
What a great, gentle introduction to some complex and emotional ideas~~ Great work! It’s amazing that you all were able to create this in only 36 hours!
Informative and fun with a very nice ending. It's a great game!
Lovely game! I had a ton of fun with it. :) The genderfluid room was nice.
simply amazing, loved super informative, the experience was very good.
pretty cool game! is there a sexual orientation one like this also?
im stuck in the doorway of no pronouns can cannot leave
Hey, thanks for the feedback. We are aware of the bug and have been working on a fix, but due to some unrelated circustances havnt been able to publish it yet. It should come within the next weeks thought.
It's a total scam I still don't know to this day :(
Anyway it's a beautiful game with a beautiful music and I love the trippy loops and mechanics. Also since I love trying to break games I found this collision bug when stepping out of the elevator.
bugs in the new version
- the pronoun door Xe seems to be surrounded by an invisible wall, same for the door no pronoun
in that barrier there is a tiny crack left of the door right by the wall (may have to do with the clipping issue going through (opening?) doors in quick succession), seems like it's one way only though; the door itself works normal but the wall keeps you from further exploration
to reproduce start the game go through the trans room to the staircase (you may walk around on the upper levels reading stuff in the other rooms), then jump down the staircase, try the doors
Thanks for putting the clarification into the void room.
This was so well done! Love the antichamber vibes
this game is really informative! i honestly love the overall design, thank you for making it!
This game made me feel the same confusion of attempting to figure out my own gender. 10/10
It was such lovely game even though I struggle to learn about other genders it still was amazing and eye-opening
Thank you!!
This game made me feel emotional. For sure the best browser game I've ever played.
I really love this game, but I did encounter a glitch where, while walking through one of the pronoun doors repeatedly, back and forth, and ended up falling out of the world
Besides that, the "Xe" door seems to be somewhat buggy; It didn't let me enter it from the front, but when I tried to enter from the side, I effectively got stuck inside the door, only being able to walk back and forth and trigger the dialogue
Thanks for the great feedback and the bug report. We have a patch in the works that will hopefully fix the glitches/bugs in the pronoun room, but it will take another week or so due to a few of us being on vacation currently =)
Amazing concept and execution, such a unique experience playing this game
this felt very cathartic and validating... thank you <3
this game is so much fun!! though when i walked through the no pronoun door, i became stuck and couldn't get out :(
This game is super beautiful and unique. I never would have thought a game that teaches you about gender and identities would have ever existed? Nor have been as fun as this was! The Xe/No Pronoun doors didn't work for me though :( Other than that this game was :) great.
they didnt work for me as welL
As a trans person, i love this game
I've never heard of One, E, or Ey as pronouns. One feels, like, unattached to gender, but not in the dehumanizing way It does. E feels like the binary version of "they" if that makes sense. Like, it's in the realm of she/he but still ambiguous. Ey has kindof an opposite feel. I'm still figuring out my own stuff, those three stood out tho, I'll look more into them and the people who use them!
this is a very lovely and helpful game, and using the He door over and over made me feel warm and happy. thank you for making this!
Love the game! Not in particular for the theme, because I think we massively overcomplicate it for ourselves, but I like to walk around in the maze, the way the terminology is explained, the music and the whole experience, actually. Nice!
Nice concept! Thanks for educating us on that important topic.
Hey! Danke für dieses schöne Video.
War spannend mal die Gedanken einer Person, die wir nicht kennen, mitzuverfolgen.
Etwas Info zu Dysphorie/Euphorie noch, weil es mir aufgefallen ist: Das ist nicht nur Körperbezogen. Geschlechtseuphorie können zum Beispiel auch trans Menschen haben, wenn sie das erste Mal ihren (richtigen) Namen oder ihre Pronomen hören. Oder wenn sie sich grade einfach wohl fühlen mit sich selbst und ihrem Geschlecht. Oder wenn sie ein tolles neues Wort oder Konzept gefunden haben, dass sie gut beschreibt.
Dysphorie können auch Menschen haben, die an sich körperlich von außen gesehen gar nicht anders wahrgenommen würden, aber sich dennoch selbst unwohl fühlen mit ihrem Körper oder ihrem Geschlecht. Aber eben auch, wenn es nicht um Körper sondern nur den gesellschaftliche Umgang mit Geschlecht geht. Wenn eine nichtbinäre Person sich zum Beispiel zwischen binärem Geschlecht auf einem Formular entscheiden muss. Oder Menschen, um sie herum sehr Geschlechterstereotype erwarten.
Haha, das ist jetzt sehr lang geworden. :D
Achso und ja zu den Türen, eigentlich hätten die alle funktionieren sollen. Da haben wir wohl mit unserem letzten Update einen Bug eingebaut. Werden das wahrscheinlich nochmal überarbeiten.
X wird auch tatsächlich so als Pronomen benutzt. Und bei uns im Bekanntenkreis wird zum Beispiel viel xier benutzt. Da gibt es auch einen tollen Erklärcomic von Anna Heger zu. ;) Ich kenne aber auch einige Personen, die nur ihren Namen nutzen.
Demi wird oft dann benutzt, wenn sich Menschen die meiste Zeit oder immer mit einem Geschlecht identifizieren, aber andere Anteile schwanken können. Also zum Beispiel als Demi-Mann, ist eine Person immer (unter anderem) männlich, aber kann auch zusätzlich manchmal genderqueer, manchmal weiblich, manchmal eher ageschlechtlich sein. Es kann auch sein, dass das nicht so stark schwankt aber eben der männliche Anteil der einzige ist, der orgendwie klar identifizierbar ist, es aber auch noch andere Anteile gibt.
Uhhh mit einer deutschsprachigen Antwort habe ich nun eher weniger gerechnet. ^^
Vielen Dank für die weitere Aufklärung! Ich bin in manchen Aspekten zwar schon grundlegend ganz gut educated, aber bei weitem noch nicht am Ende. Es gibt immer was dazuzulernen, also danke für die Ergänzung.
Es ist auf jeden Fall ein sehr interessantes, wenn auch vielschichtiges Themenfeld. Aber solche game experiences wie diese, helfen schonmal sehr gut dabei, eine erste Orientierung zu bekommen und sie sorgen spielerisch vor allem auch dafür, dass Interesse geweckt wird. Es bräuchte viel mehr solcher Inhalte. Wenn ihr vielleicht noch ähnliche Spiele rund um queere Themen kennt, würde ich mich persönlich sehr über solche Empfehlungen freuen.
In diesen Sinne - noch zum Abschluss des pride month: Happy Pride! c:
walks through he door, walks through he door, walks through he door, falls into the void
Same here, walked through a bunch of doors and then suddenly I started falling.
This is an interesting introduction and exploration mechanic to many queer terms. The mapping is certainly huge and pretty well-design, also the experience given in the section of "dysphoria" is the most relatable :')
At the side note, "No Pronoun" and "Xe" doors seem to be inaccessible, and I got stuck in lift between the map's floor after visiting the "tree" and "non-binary" room ^^;
Thanks for reporting the issue. We have a fix in the works, that will hopefully adress this and a few other issues and will hopefully be able to roll it out over the comming weeks.
Very interesting concept! Game isn't for me though. The game was a little hard on the eyes with all the white surfaces and the music, while soothing, didn't do much to keep me engaged. Concept is good, but I suppose the main criticism is that the levels could use some color.
I got to the pronoun doors and got trapped inside the "no pronoun" one. I can't leave on either side. I guess I don't use pronouns now 🤷♀️️
:D
Thank you for reporting the issue. We are working on a fix that will hopefully adress the problem causing the issue.
I love the atmosphere and dreaminess of this game. It was very nice to play. I really liked the pronoun doors.
Hey, so I may have enjoined your game a bit too much and ended up speedrunning it. I’m transfem and I enjoyed the game. It was very good.
All Attempts
Single Best Attempt
This is so cool! :D
Such an honour to have a speedrun of our game! Are you sure, this is the fastest way, though? ;-)
There’s probably a faster way, I just didn’t find it
OMG, this is absolutely amazing! Congratulations on being the first holder of the any% world record :D
i understood what gender i was but while i was discovering pronouns, Xe and no pronoun didnt let me go though but when i did i got stuck and had to do it all over again
Thanks for the feedback, we will have a look at what might cause this =)