Games have an incredible potential for embodiment and connecting with players by offering interactively staged play possibilities. Games enable the development and portrayal of individuals and their stories by immersing players actively in assuming roles while facing in-game actions and their consequences. While games that display the complex nuances of queerness populate the independent and personal game scenes, most games in the AAA scene neglect or shallowly represent queer characters, their stories, and identities. The thesis research draws from games as case studies, queer theory, queer game theory and autoethnography, exploring how biographical narratives can be built into digital games to express queer identities. A game prototype showcased at an exhibition illustrates the research, The Spy. Designed as a visual novel game, it uses autoethnography to inspire its story settings and themes, building on aspects of my identity and past to (re)create a storytelling graphical adventure game. I iterate theory and praxis via research-through-design, elucidating guidelines that support existing narrative tools, implemented in my game. The game illustrates themes of transgression, disruption, oppression, and liberation in queered self-identities intertwined to processes of disclosure. This thesis aims to provide a body of research and guidelines that allows game makers of all levels ethical and meaningful approaches to depicting queer identities in games, along a freely published game on itch.io that coalesces theory, findings, and my personal story.

• https://zeldaso2ff.itch.io/thespy