Originally posted here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfso_vnA-FE/

An autobiographical story of a transgender woman and her traumatic experiences with sex work. Personal and intense in its prose, abstract in its presentation. Defamiliarization and impersonation as representation of the coping mechanism, with a melancholic, surreal sea of consciousness bringing life to fuzzy, drowned memories. And a fitting pixel-art aesthetic - not just a stylistic choice born from lack of resources but the representation of the raw feelings of an innocent, hurt mind

I haven't really ever played a game like this; I tend to ignore a lot of the current indie space. But I really, really enjoyed this. Melancholic, slightly harrowing, and even cute in moments, it's a touching story that deeply resonated with me, even though I don't personally have experience with the main subject. Especially when it comes to stories with subjects like this, that's an impressive feat. It would also be remiss of me not to mention how good the art is. It's not like, "wow, I'm blown away, nice graphics, video game." But, like, shit. It looks pretty good, y'know.

Content Warning: Sexual Assault & Body/Gender Dysphoria

This game is incredibly hard to talk about.

As a trans person who has a history of sexual assault, the game brought up emotions I didn't know I thought I had gotten over. I was a sobbing broken mess when this was over. It brought up feelings that I have felt for a long time but have buried to try and protect myself. This game didn't make me feel good. It made me feel awful because it hit so close to home, all the feelings of dysphoria I have with my body and the gender I was assigned and all the ugliness I feel after going through trauma. The only reason this isn't a 5/5 is that I don't think I can ever play it again because I know I won't be able to handle it, at least not till I am more comfortable with myself. I just need to get it out that this game is incredibly important and it is single-handedly the most emotional game I've ever played.

A thoroughly interesting and melancholic game with a super expressive artstyle - yet the epilogue didn't hit the same note as the first half did to me. It's weird reviewing someone's traumatic life experience like this - specifically from a cis man - but I didn't feel as much for the aftermath due to a lot of the dialogue putting the blame on self for the incident, when it clearly wasn't. As a result it came across as a bit self-absorbed.

I really hope that didn't come across as insensitive, though. Stories like this are never inessential. I hope the girl that made this is doing better. Try it if you like.

While I have never been in the experiences that Taylor McCue has, which make up the semi-autobiographical narrative of this game, I can definitely relate to the sheer level of trauma and pain that is conveyed.

The visuals express a form of terror and horror that only such experiences could create, and it allows the situation to really sink in deep as you read through these nightmarish scenarios.

My chest feels tight, I want to throw up, the game did it's job at showing me Taylor's pain and sadness of being a sex worker when you don't want to.

The part that I really relate to the most is the feeling that nobody will ever love you because of your past decisions, it's something I've also coped with over these past four agonizing years of adulthood as I've felt entirely alone and unloved because of my failings as a person.

But I think that He Fucked The Girl Out of Me makes the argument that even though that feeling may be there, we should never give into it. Love will find a way, it always has.

I definitely recommend reading this, though do be advised the themes get very intense very quickly, so make sure to check the triggers before you truly get into it.

A very short but tragic look at the author's transition and all the complications surrounding this very sensitive subject. I can never ever even come close to understanding what it is like to go through a process like this, especially at a time when it was even less accepting than it is now.

The game's simple pixel art style is used to great effect as a lot of the uncomfortable moments in the story are made more impactful through the crude depictions of the characters and telling more than showing with certain scenes. The vile nature of people viewing others as only objects of sex was one of the strongest themes. The scene where you are given the choice to browse the internet and witness peoples unfiltered wants and desires made me really sick.

Stories like this definitely open my eyes more to the thoughts and feelings of people who transition. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to talk about something like this, especially with how terrifying it gets. The game was only 20 minutes but it is one I will be thinking about for a while.

honestly it kinda seems impossible to write a review for a game like this, it even feels wrong to give it a rating because it feels like im rating someones life suffering, but i guess what i have to do is just congratulate and thank the dev for getting their story out there, this game is such a real and open look into what trauma and sex work and gender is like, and as a trans woman myself it affected me alot, its amazing and super positive to see people get their story out there wether its trough a cute retro game or not, it helps us realize more what that pain is like and helps the authors finally get their feelings out, i feel like im rambling a bit now so ill just say again, congrats to taylor for this emotional story, i really hope everything goes right for you in life.

Firstly I'm openly reflecting upon this game so that people know that if you care about LGBT aubiographical trauma games (ie. No One Can Ever Know, Madotsuki's Closet, etc.) this is a very significant one to get to. My guess is that if you follow LGBT people, including me, youre going to see this on a lot of 'end of year' lists.

Now one thing I want to point out that is interesting is that due to how emotionally affecting this is, most people have gone on to speak about how it made them cry or reflect their own experiences. Even from people on here actually known for usually writing more erudite reflections. This speak to the power of its performance, but I'll be the one to highlight how.

Once you run the game on browser it blows up to fill your whole browser windows as large as possible, regals you the controls and then allows you to walk. Then, once you move to the edge of the screen 2 things happen:

Would you like to see trigger warnings? (Yes, No)

And then the first line of self narration from Ann: "The problem with talking about this is: I don't know how people will react"

One of the narrative vulnerabilities that segments this from other games of this type is that it will absolutely ask you as a player to think about your intentions in play. Pretty immediately, Ann covers both the fact that sex-work is often lionized and that this is fine by trans people as a narrative of independency. And also that, not simply just the 'text' but the main autobiographical narrator does NOT want this game to be used as a weapon to scold sex workers. What makes this great is that she effectively pulls this off without resorting to second person phrasing saying 'you might think' etc.

Ann is deeply unjudgemental in a general sense but also correctly figures out through her own internalizations that she doesn't really know yet who is reading that, that who could be anybody.

Ann as a character is very timid, flat, and introspective allowing for her lines to travel to the player directly and without flourish. Lines flow out of Ann completely naturalistically like "I couldn't really hear anything" rather than trying to describe it in some detail or another. This enhances the fact that its utilizing the smaller text box design of game boy games. Comprehension and clarity never become an issue during play.

The story is about how Sugaring made Ann less connected to her sense of self-worth and identity as a woman, which may explain why her avatar is a ghost rather than any attempt at depicting herself as a trans woman who just came out recently. It works as another fracture to remind the player that this is just a representation of the events reinterpreted by an older developer who views it as trauma.

Even outside of that the visual design and compositions are absolutely masterful. For example you end up seeing her crush sally from every angle in 2D space during close up scenes, when you move from walking to full on portraits. All of them are gorgeous but here's 2 examples from early on. Even for people who may not personally get much from the story itself, the mastery of the art design is to die for, especially if you're a fan of Game Boy Color games.

I'll join everyone else quickly on the more personal reflection here I admit this part is a bit TMI so skip it if you don't care:

I have always personally had a unstable relationship with the prospect of sex work, due to my own economic conditions and general dysphoria I haven't even felt close enough to the state I want to be in in order to really consider it. Hell the best camera I have for online sex work is a web camera that had its hinge broken off because a friend smacked a fly. So I have actually engaged in and desired the idea of sex work as somewhat of a liberatory function, mostly for online because I always saw irl stuff as both much more seedy and much more anxiety inducing. The matter of fact is I'm a bit of an agoraphobe in general because I can't control how im seen, not just a fear of transphobia but a functionally Weirder fear that I might be only beautiful from a specific angle and the fact I dont have a camera that shows people that angle makes me miserable. As such I tend to also imbue sex work with this mystic sensibility that anybody doing that probably feels visually just perfect, a 2nd order jealousy and dysphoria justified. To a large degree I think this is probably just my own brainrot due to dysphoria, but the reason I'm giving so much depth on this set of cognitive interactions and desires is that while Ann is not critical against embellishing sex work outright, she does show that its not all fun and games for Sally and that Sally feels sort of like she needs to put up a 'sociopathic' identity in order to detach. Even if you are stunning and beautiful, and even if you can utilize it to get independence through others. The fact of the matter is a large part of the game is about being desired yet trying not to let yourself 'know' the other person too much.

On a larger point this is not the only occupational ability given this degree of fixation as a liberation tool in Transfemme spaces. The Blackpaper by Nyx Land is a now slightly dated manifesto that makes a dramatic argument that Transwomen and coding are intertwined, using a quite conspiratorial logic via connecting the word UNIX to biblical references. Seeing this as a 'high IQ' form of liberation, a lot of trans women also imbue coding with this sort of liberatory function, and I feel I should stress that it's actually mostly harmless. While the Blackpaper is weird it imbues a lot of transwomen with a faith and narrative to move on. The reality is just that just as Ann shows an inability to endure to the standards of her field the other reality is that even though its a coping mechanism, we shouldn't actually expect queer people to individually 'be' good at something. For one, it takes a lot of time to get to where you want to be anyway, being a good coder or a good sex worker is not that much different a skill than, say, being good at makeup. In the same way its not ok to push transwomen to be better at makeup or tell them they haven't tried hard enough so to does it reflect here. On top of that for non-transfemme people the sentiments we are good at Hoi4, Fighting Games, Coding, Game Development, are all culturally accurate on a large level but still stereotypes. I'm not good at any of this stuff and a result can mean that people often ignore what I am good at or want to be good at. There are a lot of people out there that fail to meet any of these abilities and are seen as unexceptional, the irony is that Ann or more to the fact the author, Taylor, is 'good at Game Design' (or maybe more art design) but that's not core to the narrative at all. She just wants to exist and this happened a decade ago. So when trans people (of any gender) tell you they just want to exist in peace this is more what we mean! We shouldn't have to find a skill that makes us separated from transphobia, wherein the leisure time to improve in these lionized skills is usually dramatically truncated in comparison to a cis person anyway. The desire to 'overcome' is inherent in anybody looking to escape the chains of capitalist exploitation but we are creatures first, not workers. And as such the narrative of overcoming implies by its own design that others didn't overcome, and until we listen to what they are saying and help them, things aren't going to get better.

Anyway, I straight up don't trust anybody who gave this a 1 out of 10, and I'm summarily blocking all those fuckers in advance. A natural memoir about transphobia and trauma and you give it a 1? Get the fuck out of here with that. A 3-5/10 I can understand, but a 1 is just showing transphobic ass in a way that's 'subtle' enough not to get reported. If you're reading this and you did that, fuck you, I don't want anything to do with you. Scumfuck bastard.

Edit: Franz mentioned to me that these people have a history of doing this. I knew I was onto something. Keep an eye out on these dudes..

He Fucked The Girl Out of Me é uma experiência trágica e impactante sobre assuntos importantes. Esse é um jogo narrativo de gameplay minimalista que conta sobre as dificuldades da criadora durante a sua transição, de forma semi-autobiográfica. Isso é obviamente uma história trans e não serei um daqueles caras cis que dispensam esse tipo de narrativa por não se identificar com as situações. Os temas abordados são bem pesados, sendo esses sexualidade, prostituição e trauma. A dor que é transmitida pela narrativa é bem palpável, e ver como as tragédias da protagonista se desenrolam é deprimente. Ela não só sofreu com o preconceito com a sua identidade, mas também teve que recorrer à prostituição para pagar pelo seu sonho, com a sua saúde mental deteriorando e como os outros a desumanizam, vendo-a apenas como um objeto sexual. Mesmo que a narração e os diálogos não sejam super elaborados, eles fluem com muita naturalidade, sendo claros, concisos e não precisando descrever com tantos detalhes (como na maioria das Visual Novels). Outra coisa que me agradou, foi o seu senso de autoconsciência, com a narração humildemente admitindo que não mostra absolutamente todos os eventos de sua vida e que esse jogo não deve ser usado pra demonizar profissionais do sexo, e sem ser intrusivo. Outra qualidade é a sua direção de arte. Os visuais são um 2D 8-bits de Game Boy (tanto que a página do jogo até disponibiliza uma ROM pra jogar em emulador), que apesar de simples, captam bem as emoções das cenas e são bem compostos. Se tenho algo a reclamar, é o seu uso de trilha sonora. O jogo dura meia hora, e durante todo esse tempo não houve nenhuma música e teve apenas 1 efeito sonoro que me pegou desprevenido, e mesmo sabendo que o chip sonoro do Game Boy é limitado, não acho que seria impossível fazer músicas tensas que combinem com ele. Esse jogo é importante, por demonstrar facetas da realidade trans que não são muito discutidas e ser um bom exercício de empatia, e não importa se quem tiver contato for trans ou cis, ele é capaz de tocar em qualquer coração.

Prós: Visuais bem compostos; Tópicos abordados com a maturidade que merecem; Fluido e conciso no seu texto; Momentos autoconscientes que não são intrusivos.
Contras: Trilha sonora ausente (exceto por um único efeito sonoro)

Games began as a wholly altruistic medium. Early games are characterized by their hobbling together of primitive technologies with the singular goal to entertain. Playing any given arcade game or Atari 2600 game, all the way to systems like the N64 - arguably even persisting until the 2000s and 2010s - you can surmise very little about a game's author from the content of the game. But in the 2000s, something changed. With the advent of the home computer and the move from enterprise SDKs to downloadable game engines, games could be made by singular people, and could more accurately confront singular interests as literature had over a hundred ago as typewriters began industrial production, and as music had in the 1980s with the cassette revolution.

Even typing this flowery and faux-academic intro out, I feel a bit dirty. He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is real, a true recounting of events. Analyzing it as a piece of fiction is a horrible practice. This game, and media like it that confronts very real and horrible things experienced by real people who just happen to use a certain medium to express those feelings (see: Skeleton Tree, A Crow Looked At Me) live in an odd limbo of perception. I both feel like an interloper observing them - and am filled with the weirdest feeling seeing this game on a rating aggregation site with a 3.5 avergae - but also acknowledge that a game published by an author with other titles was definitely published in a way that is conducive to it being perceived by some kind of public. With that being said, Taylor McCue - the creator of this game - has shown positive reactions to reactions to the game so I have to assume that something like this would be an expected or even appreciated result of airing a subject like this out through a game.

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me, from start to end, is an utterly paralyzing experience. As you walk throughout these simulacra of real places and people, you can feeling the horror and tension in everything. There are no rises or falls, no closure, you merely dredge around these environments and read the dialogue in extremely tight 10-word clusters. Taylor, for the majority of the game, depicts herself as a ghost with a bow - the sole gender connotation for this apperance - in a world of humans. It feels like you're not even living these experiences so much as recounting something that has happened years ago. Even at its most visceral moments this wall is there, yet it never effects the emotions here in any way.

One thing I particularly took notice of going through this game was the (and, spoilers if you want to see it for yourself) singular sound in the entire game. As I started the game, walked through the prologue area and began the story, I just sort of accepted there was no sound. But, when I heard the ding of the phone around the midpoint of that game, that one moment had such a pull to it it feels like the center of the game to me. From then on the silence is a tool the game uses, constantly building pressure from the contrast from this one singular ding.

This might be the most in-depth game I've seen about a singular topic and its effects on its cast, and it is devastating and beautifully rendered the whole way through. I wouldn't dare try to relate myself to this - that would be monstrous - but some of the moments in this game express such a raw pathos I've hardly seen in a game to date.

All in all, I'm just glad she could get it out there.

I don’t know if there’s much I could say that the other reviews here haven’t already said.
I genuinely felt a little sick playing though this, which goes to show just how poignant it all was.

Fuck
Man