''Genital Jousting'' is a

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a Hospitality, host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will oft ...

video game developed by

Free Lives Free Lives (Pty) Ltd is a South African independent video game developer based in Cape Town. Founded in April 2012 and led by creative director Evan Greenwood, Free Lives is best known for creating the video game ''Broforce'' and has also devel ...

and published by

Devolver Digital Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wil ...

for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

in 2018.

Gameplay

In this multiplayer party game, players attempt to move flaccid, disembodied penises into disembodied anuses. The game supports up to eight players locally or online. In addition to the Traditional Mode, there are Party Mode that features ''

Mario Party is a series of party video games created by Hudson Soft and owned by Nintendo. It features List of Mario franchise characters, characters from the Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or Artificial inte ...

''-style

minigame A minigame (also spelled mini game and mini-game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short game often contained within another video game. A minigame contains different gameplay elements and is often smaller or more simplistic than th ...

s, and Date Mode that features two-player

co-op A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democr ...

gameplay. In the story mode the player is John, a working man that is looking for a date for his high school reunion.

Development

On November 17, 2016, ''Genital Jousting'' was made available through the

Steam Early Access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...

program. Though ''Genital Jousting'' has been described as "extraordinarily juvenile", it was designed in part to deliver a sex-positive message to an audience that might not come to hear it otherwise. The studio stated in its developer

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

that heterosexual men are socialized not to discuss how they feel about

anal sex Anal sex or anal intercourse principally means the insertion and pelvic thrusting, thrusting of the Erection, erect human penis, penis into a person's Human anus, anus, or anus and rectum, for sexual pleasure.Sepages 270–271for anal sex inform ...

or penises touching each other, and wrote: "we were highly motivated by the fact that Genital Jousting gave us a vehicle to have those discussions amongst ourselves." Greenwood told ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

'' that "at heart, the game is a play on masculinity, an attempt to disrupt entrenched notions of male power and authority." The game would not be allowed on major console platforms such as Xbox or PlayStation. When ''Genital Jousting'' was banned from

livestreaming Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other non- liv ...

service

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle c ...

, Nigel Lowrie of Devolver Digital contacted

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

to see if the game could be livestreamed through the platform's internal broadcasting system. ''Genital Jousting'' became the first game to be broadcast through Steam's live streaming feature.

Reception

''Genital Jousting'' received "mixed or average" reviews according to

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. The multiplayer was regarded as the core of the game and fun until the joke starts to wear thin. The story mode was deemed surprisingly emotional but too short. ''CGMagazine'' described the way the aftermath of a sexual assault in the story was handled "problematic". ''Hardcore Gamer'' said the gameplay in story mode is so different to multiplayer that "there's a rather huge disconnect between both halves of the game and it just leaves things feeling awkward."

References

External links

''Genital Jousting''
at

*{{moby game, id=/genital-jousting 2018 video games Anal eroticism Cooperative video games Devolver Digital games Early access video games Erotic video games Free Lives games Indie games MacOS games Multiplayer and single-player video games Multiplayer online games Party video games Video games banned from Twitch (service) Video games developed in South Africa Windows games