this page is very much a work in progress. This list is incomplete and functionally uncompleteable due to the medium of indie games being a ever-growing medium.
My intention for this whole list is to be one giant love letter to all the amazing and wonderfully talented trans/queer indie devs out there, and a celebration of all the wonderful work from trans people in the field of indie games. I aim to include as many devs as possible big and small.
This project takes heavy inspiration from Dot Maetrix's List Of Games By Trans People Before 2010, go check that out too her work is awesome!! ^_^
A
Ada Rook
Trans Woman, (She/They)
Aliases/Nicknames:Rook, Rat Kid
Webpages/Social Media:
Bio:
Ada Rook is a self-taught musician, and formerly co-producer on the experimental indie noise pop duo Black Dresses, alongside Devi Mccallion (whomst I am a massive fan of)
In addition to her prolific music career, Rook has also made several of her own independent game development projects, which can be found on her Itch.io Page.
Most notable of these is the game
Adrienne Bazir (insertDisc05)
Nonbinary/Genderqueer, (She/They)
Aliases/Nicknames:insertDisc5
Webpages/Social Media:
Bio:
Adrienne (InsertDisc5) Bazir is a french-canadian cartoonist and developer.
Bazir's work in gamedev started in 2017, with her first project being
later, ID5 would return to game development in 2021, during the Covid-19 lockdown.
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
Lilith Walther
Trans Woman, (She/They)
Aliases/Nicknames:Bunlith B0tster
Webpages/Social Media:
Bio:
Lilith Walther, colloquially known as Bunlith, is the founder of LWMedia, and an independent game developer who's primarily recognized for her 90s PSX-Inspired art direction that can be seen in much of her work.
One of Bunlith's earliest published works is the 2021 title
Arcus was initially released only on mobile, but recieved a PC port a few months shortly following its initial release
...soo, this would be the part where I'd put an embed linking to bloodborne psx, but... ->
..yea, kinda cant do that, sorry fellas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
yeah this was kinda expected since it shared so much with the actual bloodborne, but still sucks nonetheless (especially since I don't believe Lilith was even making any money on it, and it was purely a fanwork of the original game). You COULD probably find reuploads online, but I don't wanna condone any sites directly. Not because I don't think piracy is badass (I do), but because I don't want to run the risk of someone fucking up their machine by a bad actor injecting malware, for example. Soo... Use discretion and stay safe if you're going to
...nonetheless she did wind up making a follow-up title after the success of her PSX demake of Bloodborne, in the form of a spinoff called Nightmare Kart (Formerly Bloodborne Kart prior to sony demanding to scrub the IP from her work).
...speaking of Kart racers... Glitch Karts! A kart racer featuring characters from various IP's of indie animation studio Glitch Productions
yeah she worked on this too... it plays very similarly to the previously mentioned Nightmare Kart in most regards. Back when it was initially released, the game featured a competition in which the highest scored rankers would be featured on a leaderboard
Lily 'Freast' East
Trans Woman, (She/They)
Aliases/Nicknames:Freast, Frankeast, Unnamedazu, Vektiz
Bio:
Lily Freast is a developer from New York who-.... wait a minute...
yep, the allegations are true... I am in fact a game developer (im sorry you had to find out this way...)
Well, I initially got my start making "games" on roblox when I was a kid (games in quotes, because I used exclusively toolbox assets and didn't know shit about coding lol).
I got my real start in gamedev back in 2020 at 13, when I started learning to use Unity for the first time after watching devlogs on youtube and wanting to work on my own project like that
One of my first (PLAYABLE) published games was a submission for a game jam titled 'FREE FOOD', which was an arcade styled game
(if you wanna know just how jank this first game was... I didn't even know how to FLIP the player properly, so when you hit the left arrow and released it, the little guy would just flip back right instead of stay facing left)
a bunch of other random stuff later, and in 2023 I made free food 2! which is the objectively better experience for Free Foodery....
Later that same year, I'd release one of my personal favorite game projects: Doors 64
M
Michael 'Kayin' O'Reily
Genderqueer, (He/She/They)
Aliases/Nicknames:Kayin, KayinNasaki, KayinWorks
Webpages/Social Media:
Bio:
Michael Kayin O'reily is a solo developer spanning well over 2 decades of experience. Kayin intially got their start with game development back in the 90s as a teenager, being an active member and contributor to both the ZZT and Megazeux communities, before eventually moving to Multimedia Fusion 2 and later Construct. Much of Kayin's work takes heavy inspiration from the NES in terms of artstyle and design philosophy.
TOP: Screenshot of the Title Screen from 'I Wanna Be The Guy', which parodies that of Megaman 2
RIGHT: Cover-Art for IWBTG, featuring the games protagonist 'The Kid' front and center.
One of Kayin's most popular games he's released is the 2007 'masocore' parody game
IWBTG had also recieved an Kayin-endorsed fan-remaster, considered the best way to play the game over the original in most cases.
to this day, IWBTG still holds a dedicated community, such as on the fansite delicious-fruit.com, dedicated to creating/sharing 'Guy-like' games by fans using the source code (released by Kayin over a decade ago) from the original game
Currently, Kayin's main project for the last few years been