Gender is a fascinatingly complex topic that touches every element of a person’s life. But despite this ubiquity, deeply exploring your gender often feels overwhelming. It can be hard to know where to start, especially as social pressure leaves many people feeling trapped within the binary.
This is why video games, with their interactive and immersive worlds, are often considered the perfect place to safely explore gender and the concepts surrounding it.Trans' - Boku to Atashi no Kyoukaisenis a fantastic example of this, as the long forgotten visual novel’s unique mechanics show how self-actualizing your gender can be both terrifying and exciting in equal measure.
Originally released on PC in 2002,Transwas made by Catear, a Japanese software house that also sells crossdressing supplies. The story begins with the protagonist getting dumped by his girlfriend on Christmas Eve. Returning home and falling into an emotional slump, he spots a bag of clothes his ex-girlfriend left at his apartment and decides to try them on as a joke.
When he sees his reflection in the mirror, he gets hit by a torrent of confusing new sensations, leading to him starting a double life as a girl. While embarking on this journey of self-discovery, he meets many new people, including several who are also subverting gender.
At its core,Transis a visual novel. Each in-game day, you will go through various scenes and make decisions that affect how they play out. These scenes include trying to make friends at a crossdressing club, going on a date after a chance meeting with a girl, attempting to hide your new double life from your prying sister, and dealing with men who grope you on the train.
One place the game really shines is its outfit customization. When you decide to present as female, they’re whisked to a new screen to pick an outfit to wear that day. At first, this looks like a standard paper-doll-style dress-up game, but you’ll quickly realize this mode has way more depth than other similar-looking fashion simulators.
In the outfits section, you can combine a stunning range of underwear, socks, tops, skirts, jackets, dresses, necklaces, and earrings to create your dream outfit. You can also go into an even more in-depth makeup section, allowing you to use cleansers, lotions, foundation, blusher, eyeliner, eyeshadow, eyebrow pencils, mascara, lipstick, and nail polish to compliment and improve your chosen look.
But this mode’s depth doesn’t just come from the number of items you’re able to add to your wardrobe. It also comes from the gigantic number of things the game keeps track of. For instance, you will be warned if you attempt to create an outfit that combines a shoulderless top and a strapped bra, with the game noting you can’t wear it outside because your strap would be visible.
On top of this, certain in-game events will play out differently depending on your outfit, meaning that creating appropriate outfits for each situation is essential if you want a specific ending. The game even requires you to put on makeup in the correct order, starting with skincare and foundation and ending with mascara and lipstick. Thankfully, those who know nothing about makeup don’t need to worry, as the game includes a detailed four-page guide that explains the process step-by-step, showing how much thought the developers put into this part of the game.
These dress-up sections also include one of the game’s most fascinating mechanics: heart rate. At the start of each day, your character’s heart rate sits at 70. But, as your character experiences different events, their heart rate will rise and fall accordingly. If your heart rate gets too high, you’ll become overwhelmed and head home, forcefully ending the day.
While you’re on the outfit and makeup selection screens, your heart rate slowly rises, showing how your character grows more excited and anxious as they explore this new side of themselves. This means that players who want to experience all the story beats must learn to quickly create fitting outfits and makeup to maximize their adventuring time.
These mechanics do a fantastic job of conveying how emotionally complex experimenting with your gender and self-actualizing can be. Trans’massive number of outfit choices captures the thrill of gender exploration while giving you room to consider what you would wear if you had total free rein.
However, the system’s complexity, combined with the steadily increasing heart rate, reminds the player that it’s possible to lose sight of what you’re doing, spending so long obsessing over little details that you never make the next step into gender exploration. On the other hand, the impressive depth of these systems helps convey how overwhelming experimenting with gender presentation can feel. There are a million written and unwritten rules you must memorize before you can pull it off successfully.
While it maintains a generally light and positive tone, Trans never shies away from the difficulties exploring and subverting gender can bring, with several in-game events discussing awkward stares and unwanted touching. The game’s writers clearly based lots of the story on their personal experiences, as it has a relatable profoundness that can only come with a deep, intimate understanding of the subject matter.
Many games have explored topics relating to gender, but Trans' - Boku to Atashi no Kyoukaisenstands out as one of only a few that has captured the chaotic euphoria of gender experimentation. Much like gender in the real world, Trans' clothing system may seem simple at first glance, but dig deeper into it, and you’ll quickly find one of the most fascinatingly complex systems in gaming history, one that beautifully conveys how self-actualizing can the hardest, most overwhelming, and fulfilling experiences possible.
