Rainborough

Euphoria is a positive experience for mental health. We built a simulator based on a proposed design guideline and evaluated the effectiveness.

Years Active: 2025-current

Interactive media is a powerful engine that elicits strong emotions. Rainborough is a life simulation video game prototype built in Unity, designed around the principles of transgender gender euphoria. The game aims to explore and evoke feelings of gender euphoria a positive and affirming experiences related to gender identity. It serves both as an experimental community-driven interactive system development process and as a research tool to better understand how game design can promote well-being in transgender communities.

  • Engine: Unity (WebGL build)
  • Platform: Web browser
  • Development Team: Mixed team of HCI researchers, professional game writers, and developers, with significant trans and queer representation.
  • Collaborators: Shano Liang, Bastión Toledo-Altamirano, Elizabeth Papa, Crow Zubrick, Thea Cloyd, Rose Bohrer, Michelle V. Cormier, Gillian Smith, Lane Harrison, Phoebe O. Toups Duga

Postmortem

Interested in how this game is made? Come to our panel at Games for Good Conference at Clark and ask us questions!

We wrote a lengthy panel proposal to include the most important takeways using the “five rights, five wrongs” postmortem structure, read the paper preprint here: PDF (Postmortem panel proposal)

Game Design

Rainborough was developed by operationalizing 13 gender euphoria design principles drawn from prior research (Liang et al., 2025), structured using the Design, Dynamics, Experience (DDE) Framework:

  • Design Themes: Destigmatization, de-othering, offering expression, and self-disclosure.
  • Dynamics: Emergent properties like trans trust, safe spaces, continuum of comfort, and self-reflection.
  • Experiences: Positive self-image, social affirmation, parasocial connection, and institutional support.

Core Gameplay

  • Life Simulation: Players manage their character’s daily needs (Satiation, Hydration, Energy) and secondary stats (Empathy, Emotional Control, Manners, Creativity, Vitality, Strength). Player actions include working, eating, and sleeping affect stats and time.
  • Space Customization: Players can purchase and arrange furniture, wall, and floor tiles. Players have full color customization that enables expressive personalization.
  • Visual Novel Narrative: The game is set in the modern, multicultural town of Rainborough. Players interact with NPCs (including two major trans characters, Laila and Ambrose), build relationships, and experience branching narrative arcs. Players choose their character’s name, pronouns (multiple options supported), occupation, and gender identity at the start.

Screenshots

Rainborough Demo on itch.io

🔊 Heads up! This game includes sound. Double-check audio settings for the best experience.

⚠️ Best on larger screens: This WebGL demo may perform poorly on small or mobile screens, so the playable embed is hidden on narrow viewports. Open the demo in a new tab to play: rainborough.itch.io/demo

Opens an embedded itch.io WebGL demo in-place. Best on larger screens.

Note: The main research paper is currently under review. Further details, results, and discussion will be added or updated once the peer review process is complete.