There are so many different things a game can be, and that’s what’s so special about this medium. HARDCODED is a part visual novel and part adventure game where you play as an android liberated from slavery, and, for the first time in your life, you get to find yourself and explore your gender identity. Essentially a story about trans liberation and trans sex, the very NSFW game is Checkpoint’s Queer Game of the Month for May 2025.
** It might go without saying, but HARDCODED is an incredibly NSFW game, and therefore, the images and discussion in this article will also be of this nature. Reader discretion is advised. **
HARDCODED’s inciting incident is you being on the run from the authorities following escaping your enslavers. You bump into Beryl, a trans woman, quite different from others and takes you in. She introduces you to her friends, all trans and, finally, people like you. All dating each other in some capacity or another, you’re essentially part of a trans polycule, finally living out the life you wanted to. In short, you’re living the queer dream.
The game plays like a Persona title, with a calendar system where you can do a set number of activities each day. Set in a cyberpunk future, where sex workers can safely roam the streets and the world is more sex positive, HARDCODED poses its universe as a utopia… even if the city’s grungey and the outskirts are lakes of radioactive waste. This means a lot of your tasks each day can involve sexual encounters in a club bathroom, meetups and hookups with your closest friends, and taking up a job at a barista where one of the creams you can use is sourced from, well, two consenting adults that are tied up out back.
You could call HARDCODED gross and perverted, but you’d be missing the point. For every disposable slop porn game that you can find, there’s titles like this that actually explore sex—trans sex with trans bodies— authentically and with purpose. This isn’t a thinly veiled fetish game, it’s an experience that depicts something the gaming space has never done with such grace. There’s the heat of the moment sexual encounters where two people who are very close together momentarily don’t become two people, but two bodies desperate for each other’s satisfaction. A primal urge and need. When these two beautiful, queer and trans bodies collide and meet, it’s hard not to feel like you’re playing something special. Something never seen before.
It’s also filled with substance through its storytelling. As you get to know your peers in the world, you’re learning more about their history. Beryl speaks to you about the innate sadness and divided feelings she has about never being able to bear children, but how being a delicate, pretty housewife would give her the utmost gender euphoria. You help the cute goth girl of the group gain the courage to organise a threesome with the one person in the crew she hasn’t had sex with yet; a charming series of events that are also silly if you consider how tight-knit the group all is and how down for it they’d undoubtedly be. Given the issues trans people face in the real world right now, it’s very endearing and liberating to see a series of fictional trans women’s biggest issues being organising their next hookup or wondering whether or not their crush likes them back.
HARDCODED beautifully portrays a trans person finding themselves and becoming comfortable in their own skin in real time. As you’re paid in peanuts with the various jobs you can go on about the town, it takes you a while to earn enough money to buy a piece of clothing from a store, decor for your dingy room or new haircuts from a shady trench-coat wearing, alley lingering hair dealer who provides you with new cuts. Slowly but surely, you’re finding little oddities that make you feel more ‘you.’ That bold crop top that shows off more of your body, that haircut that’s more expressive and obscures your face less and less. As someone who’s been a trans woman for the past six years, on hormones for the last four, I’m still trying to work out how I want to identify. Getting a quasi-recreation of that in-game is something special.
Other features that help paint your experience are a unique toggle that I’ve probably never seen in any other games: one that turns off sexual encounters with men. It’s not a setting designed out of hostility, but instead for one for people with specific preferences, or even safety for those with personal traumas around men. It’s worthwhile putting such efforts in too; rarely do dating sim games feel like truly authored experiences where players can pick and choose everything, and I’m glad that’s something developer Ghost Hug Games prioritised.
Heartwrenching journal entries of a person struggling early in their transition journey, customising yourself to be the best you that you want to be, engaging in beautiful trans sex with other trans bodies… HARDCODED feels like a thing of dreams. An optimistic glimpse into the future. It’s a wonderful experience that is well worth your time, especially if you find you’re like me and are a trans person after trans goodness in this world.
HARDCODED is available now on PC. If you’re after previous Queer Games of the Month from us here at Checkpoint Gaming, why not read about an incredibly delightful Yuri visual novel that dropped last month?
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
