Cosmos Arena

As a non-binary gamer, I have often struggled with games that force me to choose between playing a male character or hypersexualized female character. Even games with elaborate character customization usually miss the mark, still requiring me to choose 'male' or 'female' right at the start.

In Cosmos Arena, you can choose your character, but they are inside a space suit with no gender or race identifiers. Through the names and voices, we hoped to imply that the characters are non-white with she/they pronouns, aiming to change how people instinctively think about playable characters whose faces they cannot see.

Cosmos Arena is a local multiplayer game for up to 4 players sharing one screen. This game is an experiment on multiplayer dynamics with both cooperative and competitive gameplay. Rather than choosing a game mode, the players to choose how they want to play through socializing outside of the game.

The first release of Cosmos Arena was for PC and Mac, but it is currently undergoing a port to mobile and will soon support online multiplayer on both Android and iOS devices. You can play Cosmos Arena on itch.io