17 indie developers who are making games about messy, sometimes toxic, queer romance

In my interview with game developer KillJill (she/her), she spoke about her difficulties about finding “anything that spoke to a more developed queer sense of self.” Instead of coming-of-age stories or works for cishet audiences, she yearned for stories that are “more lived, complete with pain and hurt and joy.”

“I'm not going to find the kinds of stories I'm looking for from things filtered through board meetings,” she said, “they're going to be from small, personal places.”

The Toxic Yuri Visual Novel Jam, a community-run event where people create games about trauma and problematic relationships between women within a strict time frame, is one of those spaces. Organized by KillJill and others, the jam ran from June 1 to July 14, 2025 and received 207 entries, many coming from first-time developers.

But after the jam concluded, Itch.io, the website host of these games, came under pressure from payment processors to de-index and even remove adult games, resulting in many entries disappearing from public view. Rather than giving up, many developers and organizers rallied together and created smaller, more niche jams that appealed to their sensibilities.

In KillJill’s words, game jams like the Toxic Yuri VN Jam are an “excuse for people to show teeth and push their own limits on where they’re willing to go.” What follows is a set of short profiles of developers who make games like this, and their experiences in these spaces.

TabbieDearest (she/her) felt this “hunger” when she realized there wasn’t enough “cheating yuri.” Her debut title, RIDE HOME, did not actually end up featuring adultery; instead, it explores the uneasy but erotically charged relationship between a trans woman and a cis woman.

Her apprehension about sharing her work publicly dissipated when she realized that others were in the same boat and just as enthusiastic. As the delisting happened, she was touched when she saw “a group of people” band together and “become a community overnight.”

The game was one of five winners of the Toxic Yuri VN Jam, all the more impressive as it featured no drawn assets and only an original soundtrack. It articulated a compelling tension regarding bodily autonomy that attracted and repelled trans players. In discussing the epilogue that takes place after the story, Tabbie explained that she sees smut “as a nightmare scenario realized or an exclamation of freedom or a conversation between lovers with their bodies. In RIDE HOME's case, it was my fears given form.”