Gender Dysphoria

Gender Dysphoria is a text-based interactive fiction game that delves into the personal and political dimensions of gender dysphoria and transition. Through a point-and-select interface set in a minimalist spreadsheet-like environment, players experience a series of abstract mini-games and narratives that reflect the emotional turmoil, identity exploration, and systemic challenges faced over a six-month period of hormone replacement therapy. Released in 2023 for Windows, this LGBTQ+-themed adventure aims to convey the complexities of transgender experiences through poignant, gameplay-driven storytelling.

Gender Dysphoria: A Review

Introduction: The Weight of a Word

The term “gender dysphoria” is a clinical descriptor, a phrase that encapsulates a complex, often painful, disjunction between one’s internal sense of self and the body or social role assigned at birth. It is a experience that defies simple explanation, often requiring a lifetime of navigation. To title a game Gender Dysphoria is to immediately stake a claim: this is not a whimsical adventure or a power fantasy. It is a deliberate, confrontational engagement with a specific, arduous human experience. Released in 2023 for Windows and Linux, this short, non-linear narrative game from an independent developer (listed anonymously on MobyGames) represents a conscious effort to transmute personal trauma into an interactive artifact. Its legacy is not one of commercial blockbuster status but of intimate, painful testimony. The thesis of this review is that Gender Dysphoria succeeds not as a traditional game but as a digital purgatory—a designed space of controlled discomfort that mirrors the nonlinear, often negative, trajectory of many transgender lives, trading player empowerment for emotional veracity. It is less a game you play and more a experience you endure, with its value lying in its unflinching, if limited, authenticity.

Development History & Context: A Quiet, Personal Project

Information on the development of Gender Dysphoria is scarce, a testament to its nature as a personal project rather than a commercial venture. It appeared on MobyGames in April 2023, with a simple listing: genre “Adventure,” perspective “Text-based / Spreadsheet,” gameplay “Interactive fiction / text adventure.” The developer’s own note, quoted in the store description, provides the clearest window into its creation: “I’ve made this game the same way you might write about the painful, dark memories you have in a journal to help process it and move on.” This frames the game not as a product for a mass audience but as a therapeutic exercise, a digital diary entry made public. The technological constraints are ironically fitting: the text-based/spreadsheet interface suggests a raw, unadorned format, stripping away graphical distractions to focus on the narrative’s emotional core. It was developed and released during an era of unprecedented visibility for transgender narratives in media, yet also one of intense political backlash. In this landscape, a game that focuses solely on the “negative experiences” of coming out feels like a deliberate counterpoint to narratives of triumphant transition. It exists in a lineage of personal, autobiographical games, most famously Anna Anthropy’s Dys4ia (2012), but where Dys4ia used a minigame format to explore a six-month period of hormone therapy, Gender Dysphoria abstracts the experience further into a non-linear text spreadsheet, evoking perhaps a clinical record, a diary, or a fragmented memory.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Architecture of Pain

The narrative of Gender Dysphoria is not a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The developer explicitly states it is a “non-linear narrative” and “only contains negative experiences.” This is its defining and most challenging feature. There is no arc of overcoming, no hero’s journey. Instead, the player is presented with a series of vignettes, moments, and scenarios that reflect the myriad ways dysphoria and societal rejection manifest. The “plot” is the cumulative weight of these experiences. Themes are not explored but enacted through the game’s structure:

1. The Pervasiveness of Dysphoria: The non-linear format mimics how trauma sticks in the mind—not chronologically, but as a looping, recurring set of painful memories and anticipatory anxieties. A “spreadsheet” structure might imply categorization, a futile attempt to systematize emotional pain.
2. The Isolation of the Trans Experience: By focusing solely on negative experiences, the game creates a claustrophobic world. There is no respite, no moment of affirmation from the outside world. This is the internal landscape for many: a constant barrage of microaggressions, familial rejection, and internalized self-loathing.
3. The Burden of Explanation: A core, devastating theme is the repeated, failed attempt to make cisgender people understand. The game’s very existence is a commentary on this—it is an attempt to “give cisgender people an idea,” but its unforgiving negativity may, as the developer acknowledges, be too much for many to bear. It rejects the role of a gentle empathy trainer.
4. Self-Preservation vs. Self-Destruction: The developer notes the game was made for themselves, to “process it and move on.” This frames the act of creation as a therapeutic, if painful, exorcism. The game becomes a vessel for the darkest parts of the experience, externalized so the creator can see it, confront it, and perhaps begin to let it go.

The dialogue is sparse, text-based, and likely stark. There are no characters in a traditional sense; the “you” of the game is the player/developer avatar, and the “world” is a series of antagonistic or dismissive forces represented through text. Character is asserted through reaction and internal monologue.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: Interaction as Endurance

Gameplay in Gender Dysphoria is defined by its interface: “point and select” within a “text-based / spreadsheet” environment. This is not a game of puzzles, combat, or progression. There are no stats to raise, no enemies to defeat. The core mechanic is navigation through pain. The player clicks through nodes of narrative, each a discrete negative experience. The “spreadsheet” likely presents these experiences as rows in a table, perhaps with categorical tags (e.g., “Family,” “Healthcare,” “Social,” “Internal”). The non-linearity means there is no prescribed order; the player can assault themselves with memories of familial rejection, medical gatekeeping, or public harassment in any sequence. There is no victory condition, only the act of continuing to click, to witness. The “innovative” system is this ruthless framing: using the sterile, organized language of data (a spreadsheet) to catalogue the messy, chaotic hurt of dysphoria. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the clinical gaze often imposed on transgender lives. The “flaw” is inherent to its design: there is no release, no catharsis. This is not a flaw in execution but a feature of intent. The game is meant to be wearying, a simulation of emotional fatigue. The only “progression” is the slow, reluctant accumulation of understanding, both for the player and, presumably, the creator.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Aesthetics of Austerity

The world of Gender Dysphoria is not a physical place but a psychological one, mapped onto a spreadsheet. The visual direction is purely textual. The “art” is the font, the layout, the cold lines of the spreadsheet grid. This aesthetic of austerity is powerfully intentional. It rejects any potential for exoticism or soft-focus sentimentality. There are no beautiful pixel art vignettes, no melancholic chiptune soundtrack (at least, none mentioned). The environment is clinical, detached, and oppressive in its simplicity. It looks like a form, a record, a case file—echoing how transgender people are often discussed as medical or sociological subjects rather than as people. The sound design, if any, would likely be minimal or absent, leaving the player alone with the text and their own reactions. This lack of sensory cushioning amplifies the impact. The atmosphere is one of stark, unmediated confrontation. The spreadsheets don’t cry; they list. This contributes to the overall experience of being subjected to a relentless, data-driven account of suffering, mirroring how dysphoria can feel like a relentless, logical (if cruel) series of failures to align self and world.

Reception & Legacy: The Quietest Impact

Gender Dysphoria has had an extremely limited reception. On MobyGames, it is “Collected By 1 players” and has no critic or player reviews. This is not surprising. It was released quietly on Steam and itch.io, with no marketing beyond its stark description. It exists in the vast ocean of itch.io’s personal projects. Its legacy, therefore, is not one of influence on the mainstream industry. Instead, its place is within a specific niche: the canon of brutally personal, autobiographical games about transgender experience. It stands in direct conversation with Dys4ia, though the two are stylistically opposite. Where Dys4ia (2012) used playful, often humorous minigames to break down a specific medical process, Gender Dysphoria (2023) uses a deadpan, spreadsheet format to convey a generalized sense of persistent negativity. The latter feels more conceptually aligned with the “unforgiving” and “indulgent” self-assessment the developer describes. Its influence is likely to be on individual players who stumble upon it and see their own darkest moments reflected, and on the developer’s own process. It is a document of a specific emotional truth, and its value lies in that honesty, not in its accessibility or popularity. It represents a trend of “trauma games” that prioritize authentic expression over traditional game design virtues.

Conclusion: A Difficult, Necessary Document

Gender Dysphoria is not a game for everyone. It is not designed to be fun, engaging, or even “enjoyable” in any conventional sense. It is, instead, a successful piece of affective design. By eschewing traditional narrative progression and graphical presentation for a non-linear, spreadsheet-based text format, it achieves a powerful, if harrowing, representation of a specific transgender reality: one defined by recurring negative experiences, clinical detachment, and a profound sense of isolation. Its lack of reception is a function of its very nature—it is a raw, personal document first and a commercial product a distant second. To recommend it is to acknowledge its difficulty; it is a game that demands emotional capacity, not skill or patience. Its place in video game history is not as a classic or an innovator in mechanics, but as a contemporary artifact of the “personal game” movement. It is a stark, unflinching mirror, held up to a specific, painful experience. As the developer intended, it is a journal entry made interactive. Its power is not in what it says about the world, but in what it reveals about the cost of existing in that world as a transgender person. For those who share that experience, it may offer a grim sense of solidarity: “you are not alone in your pain.” For those who do not, it is a challenging, essential, and deliberately uncomfortable document. It is a game that earns its title, and then some.