A downloadable game

Strange Dates

Showcased in the Queerness and Games Conference 2018 Arcade in Montreal

Light interactive fiction w/ sexy mini-games

Wonder/ponder through

  1. banalities & occasionally welcome surprises in a queer app dating simulator
  2. the linguistic tics, and the heights and troughs of, interpersonal culture in online dating spaces
  3. body image, prejudice, internalized homophobia, and maybe also the serendipitous things that can sometimes happen when meeting strangers for sex
PLAYTIME

15 minutes

CONTROLS

Point and click to play. Click to advance faster.

Leverage the arrow keys to your benefit when prompted.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

https://kev.town/misc/StrangeDates_ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.txt

GAMEPLAY TIPS

"I like my sex 'semiotically charged'."

"I've deleted Grindr so many times I've lost count."

"I don't understand the world, I live in the internet."

"I'm not entertaining enough for my therapist"

"Grindr, by the way, for a sex addict is like giving a drug addict a locked room and an unlimited supply"

"I'm chasing something entirely different and certainly much more destructive when I open Grindr."

"Without a strong support system or a dominance over the more addictive parts of my personality, I don't think I could do this for much longer without being hollowed out in some irreversible way."

"But I think these outlier experiences--the really amazing jackpots--are one of the reasons it's so hard to quit."

"In retrospect, one of the biggest problems with hooking up online is just that (if you're privileged to be white or cis and with an "acceptable" body type) you don't have to work for it. There's no elaborate story about how charming you were at the gallery opening, or how your irresistible your dancing was across the room, or even how you just locked eyes across a party with someone and then had one of those instant-on conversations in that way that is charged with tension. Instead, you get a walk through the dark up to someone's porch, and the suspense of waiting for them to answer the doorbell. Everything else is (almost) a foregone conclusion, and therefore kind of essentially unexciting."

"One of the most heartbreaking things: seeing someone frustrated by their limitations and not understand they are self-imposed, arbitrary."

More information