Queer Games Bundle 2021 on Itch.io will fill your summer with 236 games

The Queer Games Bundle 2021 is live now on Itch.io, giving you instant access to more than 200 games all for the price of a single AAA video game.

The new bundle will be available all throughout June in celebration of Pride 2021, with 236 entries from LGBTQIA+ creators all put together for $60 (another version of the bundle is available on a sliding scale from $10 to $20, though the curators encourage you to pick up the full-priced version if you currently have the means). With 236 games available all together, you'll save $559 off their standard price, and you'll help support a ton of independent LGBTQIA+ game makers.

The bundle includes a massive spread of games and other projects across genres: there are visual novels, RPGs, beat-em-ups, and even a nice spread of tabletop RPGs and similar story games if you're in the mood for something a little more analog. I've already come this close to picking up Glitter Hearts, an RPG about playing a team of magical-girl-inspired protagonists, and Underground Broadcast, a fast-playing game of countercultural graffiti punks inspired by Jet Set Radio, like a dozen times each, but clearly it was just fate telling me to wait for the bundle.

Massive, community driven bundles are getting to be a thing on Itch.io - a very cool thing - with the most prominent previous example being the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, which raised more than $8 million for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Community Bail Fund last year. That bundle ended up with a final count of 1,704 included games and projects.

As of this writing, the Queer Games Bundle 2021 bundle has raised just over $25,000, with the proceeds set to be divided evenly among all the participating creators (helping independent LGBTQIA+ creators pay their rent is also a worthy cause). The bundle is co-hosted by swampbabes.org, a queer art and games collective based out of Rochester, New York which aims to provide a "a platform for diverse voices and bodies outside the structures of the already-established 'art world.'"

If you're trying to keep track, here are some new indie games 2021 to check out.