Being trans in Brazil, and playing Melty Blood together
The Queer Games Bundle is a collection of nearly 600 items by LGBTQ+ creators and teams, nearly 400 of which are independent video games, all sold for just $60. I’m talking with creators from the bundle about their games and their making habits. Visit the bundle and consider buying it.
TangledVirus is a game developer in Brazil, with a Twine story called Aston May Die in the Queer Games Bundle. You play as a trucker, Esthiru, who meets an exciting woman named Aston one night at a bar. They have a sweet, comfortable friendship and casual relationship despite the fact that Aston is pretty sick. I loved the story, the setting in Brazil, and how slice-of-life the game is with these two characters who really like each other.
How long have you been making games?
I’ve been making games since 2019! It hasn’t been long but it’s super fun!
What tools do you like to use?
Right now I use Ren’py and Twine to make my games and Clip Studio Paint to make the art.
What themes or genres do you like to explore?
I like to explore and talk about being trans in Brasil. Not necessary about figuring out or starting to transition but about trans people just having to live in a country that is proud in being one of the most dangerous to trans people. Now about genres, I really like urban fantasy, it’s such an “everything goes” genre that it makes it very fun to write, and about game genres, my games are all Visual Novels and Twines so there’s that. But I want to make shooter and a fighting game one day!
What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of making games?
Favourite, I would say making the art and writing the games. The least favourite is the programming part not that it’s hard (it is) but more because it can be quite confusing. I like figuring out how to do stuff that I didn’t knew before when it comes to programming but it’s still my least favourite part.
Is there a game that has affected you recently?
I would say… Synergia, it’s a cyber punk visual novel, and I don’t know how to say it but the whole journey of playing it and get both endings was really fun and it just gave me a lot of ideas. I’m already working to make those ideas a reality, so it also filled me with a lot of motivation.
Another one that affected me recently is King of Fighters XV and that’s just, freaking great. It’s like this entire dev team was in a street and was like “HEY! Look at our characters! Aren’t they cool?” and then they just start playing fighting games with you because once you play this game you realize that it was made by people that freaking love fighting games and wanted to deliver something that would make you love fighting games too.
It’s that sort of passion that I love to be around.
Also, I played the Signalis demo and it’s freaking awesome.
Aston May Die came from a game jam — what was that experience like?
It was a normal experience for me, I participate in a game jams all the time (to my detriment I have to say), so I was used to making a game in a short while. So, I just made a short thing that I could make fast. I have an easier time in Twine than in Ren’py, so I made a piece of interactive fiction, I decided to focus on writing than on drawing so I did that, then some stuff happened on the middle of the jam that made me lose some time to work on it, but everything ended fine. I’m glad that people liked it.
I liked the idea of enjoying “childish” things as an adult, and playing games as a bonding activity. What inspired you to include that?
I was inspired by my own experience, I have a really hard time sharing what I like in real life, it’s still hard over the internet but not as hard. So for the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to be more open about what I like and not care about other people’s thoughts on it. The childish part, well… I think that nowadays a lot of people just realized that the idea that we have of what an adult should be is just awful and it makes life worse overall. It’s this dumb idea that once you are of age you need to discard everything in order to work and reproduce until you die. I and a lot of people would rather not have that. Granted, as we grow we have responsibilities and we need to fulfill them, but that doesn’t mean that you have to give up on what brings you happiness, even if that is childish like plushies, that doesn’t mean never engaging with adult things though. You can watch cartoons and be a BDSM domme, one thing doesn’t forbid the other, and you need to engage with adult things in an adult way. So, you know, extremes are bad!
Now about the playing games part, I think games are an incredible way to make friends. Playing them, talking about them, making them, you name it, and with fighting games having such a focus on community it makes then even better as a social experience. Experiencing the hype for a fighting game, or a tournament, or even a trailer for a DLC character with friends is always a very good experience.
It’s just really fun to learn a game with a friend and see all the BS you two can come up with it.
Baunilha is Aston’s companion . . . animal? What is Baunilha really? Where did she come from?
Baunilha is a ghost. Long story short, Aston May Die is set in the same universe as game of mine called Sláine the Slacker, and in that game you also find a weird thing like Baunilha in there, it’s also a ghost. And basically, there’s just these weird strange animal/supernatural beings strolling around and they just hang around, they are all ghosts, they all want something. Maybe it’s someone to be their owner, maybe it just doesn’t want to die alone. Or maybe it’s just a weird tree that lives in you shadow now, and it makes exploding critters.
One day Aston found Baunilha just like someone would find a dog in the streets, see it doesn’t belong to anyone and just go “Screw it, I have a weird animal thing now.” Baunilha can be both a cuddly plushie like thing that kinda looks like a Moo from the Klonoa series, or a weird evil looking dog with tons of arms that would fit perfectly in an issue of Spawn, and I’m talking early Spawn in the 90’s, if you know, you know. It’s still the same being, Baunilha, it just change its looks sometimes. It eats normal food, and if you tell Aston to give it dog food she’ll be freaking pissed, but also, Aston is one of those dog owners that give normal food to dogs.
Where ghost come from? I don’t know, I want to explain it in the future, but at the same time, I also don’t? I think they being this thing that are just there is enough and the mystery of where they come from is enough.
Aston is sick but it isn’t clear what she has. Do you have something specific in mind, or is her condition more symbolic?
I have something in mind, yes but it’s also symbolic. Aston is just a friend you made and deep down you know it won’t last, not the friendship but her presence in your life. Aston lives in the moment, not in the past, not in the future, she lives in the now and the story of Aston may Die is about Esthiru learning to enjoy the moment, forget what happened in the past, and don’t stress about the future. The girl you might love is right at your side, enjoy it, play a game with her, have sex with her, take a nap with her, have lunch with her, just enjoy the moment.
It’s also about loving someone that is dying, and not thinking about it. Yes sometimes it’ll come to Esthiru’s head that Aston is dying, but that doesn’t stop Esthiru from enjoying Aston’s presence.
That said, the game became even more personal to me after something that happened this year, it was a weird case of art imitates life and it was a strange little moment, and that gave me ideas for the sequel that will come out… EVENTUALLY! I am only one person!
Also the sequel will tell you what Aston has, and it’s both from her life being rough and her own neglect over her own health.
What inspired you to make Aston a sex worker? What do you hope people take away from her story?
I made Aston a sex worker because, here in Brasil most trans fems have had to or still do sex work for a living or to help their income and we need more trans fem protagonists and more protagonists that are sex workers and not treat them as a bad person because of that, we also shouldn’t romanticise sex work, it’s not a perfect line of work, none is really. Also, I feel like that there’s a lot of talk about sex workers when it comes to people that do camming or sell pictures and videos of them, but very little about the ones that, like Aston, work the streets. I’m not saying that camming is easier, it isn’t it has it’s own challenges, but we don’t really talk about front facing sex work that much, the challenges of it, how dangerous it can be, how even more dangerous cops are when they target sex workers. This also inspired the part in the game where Esthiru shows that she’s worried about Aston’s job.
What I want people to take from Aston? Enjoy the moment, tell the people you love that you love them, allow yourself to like things, play Melty Blood.
The play Melty Blood part is the most important one, at least to me.
