Anybody who has grown up as part of a minority group – whether it be due to their race, their sexuality, or their gender identity – knows just how tough it is to see oneself reflected in the media at large. Far from simply being an issue of vanity, representation has real-world consequences. For many people, media forms the boundaries of possible ideas and possible identities. With the current renaissance in small-studio video game production, it seems the perfect time to expand those boundaries. Aerannis is a slick, 2-D platformer, with nonlinear and exploratory elements reminiscent of the Metroid and Castlevania series, with a trans woman as the game’s protagonist. The game is being developed by Portland, Oregon studio ektomarch, who are Kickstarting funding for their game until the end of the month.

Aerannis is set in a distant future year, in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Unspecified catastrophes have decimated world populations, save for the bastion of Plovdiv, now populated entirely by women. The city’s oppressive government deals with dissenters through covert assassinations, and it is at this point that Ceyda, a Turkish-Bulgarian trans woman, discovers that the government that employs her to do its dirty work is not all that it appears to be.

The story unfolds through missions, dialogue and a mixture of stealth, action and exploration gameplay. One of the ektomarch developers, who selects to keep their identity private, took some time out of their busy production schedule to answer a few of my questions.

GayCalgary: Why was it important to you that Aerannis have a trans protagonist?

ektomarch Developer: "A big reason why I wanted a trans protagonist is, for one, there is under-representation in basically all media; and two, I thought it would be a pretty interesting story to tell. The main point of the game is that no matter what kind of society you’re in, there is somebody out there who has to blame all their problems on somebody else.

GC: Ceyda is a trans woman in a society where the ‘default’ individual is a woman. Do you think this might make her experience mirror closer to that of a trans man in our society?

eD: I would say that would be [analogous to] the experience of any minority, whether it be a racial minority, religious minority, trans woman, trans man, gay, lesbian, whatever.

GC: What inspired you to use Bulgaria as a setting, and Plovdiv in particular?

eD: I studied Bulgaria. I had a professor, an older woman, who told us stories about what the communist times in Bulgaria were like, and I thought it would be interesting to retell that in a futuristic setting, using different politics, but [with] the same kind of stuff happening. There was a definite ruling class, but they would always say, Hey, we’re totally with you; we’re with the people, and [claimed that] we completely achieved all our goals; communism is here, everything is fine now. When, if you actually talk to people, it very clearly wasn’t. People were poor as ever – if not worse... Also, during that time, [Soviet] Bulgaria tried to wipe out the Turkish identity... even though they were a very large minority, which is the reason why I chose [the protagonist] as a Bulgarian Turk.

GC: Was the oppressive government in Aerannis inspired by trans-exclusionary radical feminists?

eD: Yeah, that was definitely a big thing for this. You basically have this big divide – there’s trans-exclusionary radical feminism – they see their view as being absolutely correct and non-negotiable, and that everything comes down to sex. That’s it. End of discussion. The game is more about radicalism in the sense that [the government] believes they have attained their end goal; that’s it, no more need to talk about it; we fixed everything.

GC: The game seems like it could be troubling for trans players, if characters are going to be aggressive toward Ceyda because of her identity. Do you think Aerannis would be ‘safe’ for a trans person to play?

eD: There will be a little bit of that, to show that this is stuff that happens, and it is to show that people will disrespect somebody just for an identity, instead of judging them based on their actions or who they are. I suppose that a person who has had a lot of bad experiences might be triggered by it in some way, but it’s not going to be extreme. It will mostly be to convey to people who don’t have those experiences that this is the kind of stuff that [trans] people deal with.

GC: Could you describe the aesthetic of Aerannis?

eD: Mostly inspired by old Sega Genesis action games, and a little bit of it...  is inspired by psychedelic art, just mildly. The main goal was to have a very colourful, clean, plastic-looking future, like everything’s fine, it’s all happy here, it’s all great! The government only cares about the outward image, versus what is actually going on inside.

GC: Did Ceyda’s identity influence her character design?

eD: For the most part I tried to make her very, very average-looking, to show that she’s not physically exceptional or anything like that, it’s just that she is a motivated person. That is why I just gave her a plain white T-shirt. The hair is a little bit futuristic – nobody has natural-coloured hair. Everybody can just dye their hair at will – it’s a normal thing. I just wanted to make her look like a fairly normal woman, although I have seen people commenting that she looks extremely masculine. I didn’t intentionally do that, but I guess it may be like the jaw, or something. It’s just the way I draw.

GC: The setting and the gameplay of Aerannis make it inevitable that there will be violence against women. How did you approach this as a designer to avoid making it gratuitous?

eD: It is not specifically targeting women, it’s that when you have a society with only one type of person, if it’s an action game, of course there is going to be action against that type of person... If women rule society then clearly the women in this society are not weak, so if it is a woman standing against the main character, that will be a target that she has to take down. One person did mention that it was sexist that I didn’t have men as enemies, but if I had men as [the game’s antagonists], that would show that men are still the ones in control of women, even in an all-women society, which I think would be much worse.

GC: One of the game’s preview clips shows Ceyda blasting at a robot-looking enemy with a silhouette that most people would identify as male. How does that fit in?

eD: [They] are actually humans wearing body armour. One reference for that was Metroid. The main character in Metroid, she has this huge, bulky body armour, because it’s meant to be armour, not meant to accentuate any sort of female figure or anything like that. It was a means to desexualize [the antagonists] and show that they have power; they have authority.

GC: Some of your Kickstarter rewards offer to let backers design missions and bosses. How do you expect to incorporate that into the game?

eD: I won’t just let them completely dictate – it has to fit the theme in some way. So if they want to design a boss as just a giant person... that wouldn’t completely work. It would have to be a giant robot. I’ll do my best to give them what they want, but I’ll make sure to build the game around it in some way.

Aerannis is currently in development with a Kickstarter campaign underway to raise funds. It is projected to release on PC, Mac and Linux. Find more information about the game at http://www.ektomarch.com/aerannis/ and https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ektomarch/aerannis.