Truer Than You, our July 2025 Queer Game of the Month, is a new visual novel from Transcenders Media all about the masks we wear every day, struggling through the gig economy while broke and finding love in unexpected places. Featuring a non-binary lead and sporting several potential queer romances, it’s an endearing and surprisingly emotional experience for its relatively short runtime that’ll stick with players.
Non-binary 20-something-year-old Rin has moved to a new city and takes up a job essentially as an actor, joining a company that has people for hire for everyday people’s needs. Need a plus one for a baby shower? Or someone to pretend to be your kid’s biological father? Maybe even make that rich husband jealous? Rin’s the one for the job.
“Truer Than You is a wonderful visual novel with concise, subtle and artful queer storytelling”
Before long, they connect with a series of clients and, thanks to their androgyny, are well-equipped and willing to play any role that they see fit, be it even ones that have them dressing up more feminine or masculine. It’s a beautiful, human and very real way of depicting all the different ways of ‘being’ that a person who doesn’t fit into a gender binary or box can perhaps be. There are moments where this expressionism is euphoric for Rin and moments where it’s the polar opposite. Small talks with others might have the other party entirely misunderstand the kind of person Rin is. In painfully real framing, Rin may just very well choose to let this go to keep the peace with others.
Rin is reminded by their employer to never fall in love or form connections with their clients. Of course, life is never that simple, and Rin can find love in the most unexpected places. One moment, they’re helping record a shady political message with a fiery and mysterious red-haired girl who uses a code name, but if you do well enough on the job, you get to know her and hell, maybe even form a polycule relationship with her and her partner. As you progress through the game, the line between work and personal life blurs, and Rin can choose who they want to surround themselves with. This means they embark on jobs where they see the best and worst of humanity, seeing the other side of people, learning their secrets and why they are the way that they are. Though it’s not clear if this is a deliberate design choice from Transcenders Media, it’s reminiscent of how a lot of queer people live their lives—especially those who work in sex work!
Truer Than You finds compelling ways to hook the player by using less conventional mechanics for the visual novel genre. Dialogue choices appear as speech bubbles mid-conversation, often sprouting a few. These can disappear over time if you progress through more lines of dialogue, but more can pop up if you hold out and wait for another, or you can leave it and not reply at all. What this means is that at given moments, you can choose how reserved or outspoken Rin is. Players can pick their battles, maybe going against the grain in one conversation or holding back in another. On some dates, you’ll not be able to make a move until you wait a beat for the right signal, accurately depicting the electricity that can come with a first date and learning how to be around, kiss and touch another. It’s an emphatic and powerful gameplay mechanic that can either empower or challenge the player at a moment’s notice.
Keeping you coming back for more, following your initial run that spans about two hours, is a lot of moving parts underneath the hood. There are a lot of choices that can be made (over 1,100) throughout the course of the game, leading to plenty of branching and multiple possible endings. You can revisit and take another stab at a previous date that didn’t go according to plan, seeing through all possible romances in the game. Most enticing is the overarching mystery that’s occurring as you see Rin in their off time investigating a figure from their past. As the puzzle pieces slowly form together, you begin to understand the full picture and see how Rin came to be how they are. In short, Truer Than You is a dating visual novel game with bite.
Truer Than You is a wonderful visual novel with concise, subtle and artful queer storytelling. Some routes end a little more abruptly than I would’ve liked, but as a whole package, it’s hard to ding for how memorable and enveloping a queer story it is. The world may painted in pastel and pretty lights, but there’s depth here that I can tell the development team truly slaved away at to get just right. Don’t let this pass you by, I’m pleading you.
Truer Than You is available now on PC. For anyone who values nuanced queer storytelling, you’ll want to do your absolute best to prioritise it and check it out.
After previous Queer Game of the Month articles from us here at Checkpoint? Why not check out our thoughts on the São Paulo-based Pivot of Hearts?
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.
