BOSSGAME and the Importance of Established Queer Relationships in Media
Image source: Lilycore Games
Welcome back to Narrative Thoughts! So really all I have to say is go play BOSSGAME for cute lesbian flirting okay thanks, bye.
…
W-what? Oh, right, I need to explain further. Right, ahem.
BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart is a delightful boss rush indie game with amazing queer characters. It’s complex and thoughtful—and the queer relationships aren’t doomed to tragedy, subtext, or queerbaiting. The fact that this game exists brings me joy. I love it not only because it gave me several emotions but also because it shows a lesbian couple being honest, communicating in the face of difficult moments, and being unashamedly in love with each other and flirting constantly, it’s great.
The game follows girlfriends Sophie and Anna as they fight devils for Sophie’s churchmother of the Church of Mammon. From there you use boss rush mechanics (with a respectable amount of gameplay customization options) to take down devils and try your best to pay rent.
But of course, not everything is what it seems…
It goes without saying to talk further about this that I’m going to spoil the game a bit so GO PLAY IT. IT’S $10 ON STEAM. SHOO.
Image source: Lilycore Games
Back? Cool, okay.
As you fight more and more devils, it becomes obvious that the churchmother isn’t telling Sophie everything and that something is amiss. Anna starts to ask Sophie if this is a good idea, but Sophie can’t face the truth of the situation and drags Anna further and further into decisions that hurt both of them. Finally, towards the end of the game, the churchmother admits she marks priestesses and if they disobey or turn away from the church, that mark turns them into devils.
As an ex church kid who came out as bisexual and then later as nonbinary and has a lot of trauma from my time in the church, yeah, wow, that hit hard. Sophie’s inability to accept this at first, that the churchmother was bad—ditching Anna at what by all rights felt like a big final boss fight—was both understandable and upsetting. In that moment you, the player, are also ditched. For the rest of the fight, you have only Anna. And, oh yeah, a timer begins ticking down now, and Anna has to defeat the churchmother in time entirely alone. It was such a brilliant moment of gameplay interwoven with narrative. Anna leaves Sophie for this for a bit in the game, allowing you to experience other character combos which made for an enjoyable interlude, deepening your appreciation of their friends Dawn and Mirra before the final battle.
Sophie’s character arc gives a satisfying will they/won’t they conflict, but the part I found endearing was that after that battle, after Sophie leaves Anna in that fight and Anna leaves Sophie for it, you are reassured by a brief aside with an avatar of the game developer that things will be okay. This allows for added tension and realism while also having reassurance that this isn’t a queer tragedy or a game that dips into other negative queer relationship tropes. This makes space to have a very real theme of struggling with people pleasing and letting go of jerks in your life who only love you conditionally—in Sophie’s case, the churchmother. As a recovering people pleaser, that’s a powerful theme. And as someone who has absolutely hurt friends and loved ones trying to make someone who would never love me back happy? Yeah. That’s a critical hit.
What’s even better is that Anna and Sophie get to have conversations about it. Anna talks to her friend Dawn (who is the best), and reconciles with her after having a fight. Sophie realizes she’s massively messed up and goes to talk to her friend Mirra (who is a mirror reflection theme incarnate and I love them, just saying). They talk to Sophie about it, and Sophie embraces that being a devil—going against the church and the churchmother—isn’t so bad. In fact, it was for the best in the end, because devils aren’t so bad and only want to save the city from Mammon and the churchmother. Embracing who you are and kicking out people who only see you for what you can do for them, someone to be tolerated, is something many players can identify with.
Seeing Sophie apologize to Anna sincerely, after looking inward at herself—literally, through a series of gameplay sequences—was such a beautiful moment. Watching Anna and Sophie work through Sophie’s mistakes and reconcile then fight the final boss with the power of love and friendship gave me a big emotion because you so rarely see that.
In most media, especially in AAA games, queer coded characters are largely killed off (I’m looking at you, FFXVI). Or in other media when a queer couple exists, their relationship and their queerness is perpetually ambiguous. It’s relegated to subtext, only ever alluded to in dialogue tones and other hints that wink at the viewer but never make anything clear in what’s typically referred to as queerbaiting. Worse, if they do become explicit, if they kiss or come out plainly as queer, something bad happens to one or both of them. Supernatural is the textbook example of queerbaiting, but it’s not the only media that falls into this trap. It’s incredibly exhausting as a queer person to never see queer joy or queer complexity outside of very specific shows (I need to watch Heartstopper just saying), so anytime I do see it in a game or show it’s always a breath of fresh air. Gaming, in particular, seems to be particularly egregious with either killing queer characters or never explicitly stating they’re queer or, once a character kisses their queer love interest (or is implied to have smooched them), they die.
This is why BOSSGAME is so powerful. Sophie and Anna are a year into their relationship by the start of the game. It surprised me how little I could come up with when I tried to think of games with an established lesbian couple like that. Yes, it’s out there and yes, I am getting better at hunting it down—but that’s just it, I shouldn’t have to hunt around for it like it’s some obscure, rare niche topic. Queer people are not some rare niche topic!
I want more media that tells committed and explicit queer relationship stories. This is why I love finding queer indie games. When we reach a point where queer media has angst, joy, and everything in between in terms of good and actually diverse queer representation, it’ll be a good day. For now though, games like this certainly help bring needed relationship dynamics to the table, and I’m very glad BOSSGAME exists.
Thank you for reading my Narrative Thoughts! I hope you enjoyed it and it wasn’t too rambling. If you liked this post and would like to support more articles like it, consider becoming a patron or throwing me a tip on Ko-fi~
