Very historically important, and very awesome that it existed at all, but still a game a million times more interesting to learn about than to actually play.

The story within and behind the making of this game is pretty dang cool, but it is still an "action-verb" adventure game with a set of not super well chosen verbs (what's the difference between look and investigate? and why even bother having a lockpick if it only works on a single door?), where you'll be trial and erroring a ton and frequently being booted back to the title screen. You can use a guide, but at that point it's short enough that you may as well just watch a YouTube video about the game. Obviously Caper in the Castro is by no means alone in these problems--these were very much hallmarks of the entire adventure game format in the era--but I've always been more of a Myst guy than a Lucasarts guy, is all I'm saying.

Gameplay gripes aside though, it is still extremely cool this was made when it was. A "gay short-form adventure game released for free over the internet" is the sort of thing you'd expect to be released on itch in the past 5 years, not via a BBS in 1989. Even though there's really not much going for it in the gameplay department (you're never going to hear anyone singing praises for the straightwashed version of this, Murder on Mainstreet), you've gotta give it props for being so many years ahead of its time regardless.

     'We floated off into that quiet world which love made possible because the power devils had been admitted and therefore banished.'
     – Mary Wings, She Came Too Late, 1986.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (4th Jul. – 10th Jul., 2023).

The 1980s saw a shift in American lesbian fiction away from coming-out stories and towards the detective genre. This transition was not entirely smooth and was met with highly polarised critical responses. Reagan's presidency unleashed a national conservative fever that sought to normalise homophobia, while the AIDS epidemic was greeted with outright inaction by the federal government. Anna Wilson defines this decade as a point of transition for feminist and lesbian identities, as 'the focus of the women's movement had gradually shifted away from an emphasis on exploring and enhancing the "liberated" self toward a preoccupation with that self as embattled and endangered' [1]. Furthermore, the new discourses on sexuality also sought to de-essentialise lesbian sexual identities, rejecting the clichéd labels that sharply distinguished between butch and femme.

     American lesbian detective fiction in the 1980s

Unlike the coming-out story, which revolves around introspection and the exploration of domestic life – since the discovery of lesbian romance takes place largely out of the public eye – lesbian detective fiction reinvests the public sphere, especially the streets. Despite its persistent aura of threat to women, the street has become a place where lesbian detectives can express themselves. Some take on the authority of institutions: Kate Delafield, the protagonist of Katherine V. Forrest's novels, recognises the structural abuse caused by the family, a place of male domination, and upholds the weight of the law – which she believes to be just – as the only way to bring about change in society. Not all detectives are as reformist as Delafield, but the whole sub-genre recognises that society is constructed in the service of male power [2].

C. M. Ralph's Caper in the Castro echoes these changes. The player assumes the role of Tracker McDyke, investigating the disappearance of her girlfriend, Tessy LaFemme. Behind this mystery lies a series of murders that underline a vast anti-LGBT conspiracy on Castro Street – the main avenue in San Francisco's historic gay district. Finding one's way around the various screens is difficult at first, as the interactions are so rigid and the context so minimal, but after a few minutes it becomes clear that Castro Street is plagued by a wave of violence. Ralph – undoubtedly inspired by the events leading up to the White Night riots (1979) – repeats the same stern observations as crime literature, highlighting not only public inaction but also the murderous impulses of the privileged ruling class. The title makes no attempt to hide its ambitions, ridiculing white heterosexuality through the detective's pithy tone.

     Stigma reversal and agency through the detective's eyes

Caper in the Castro is not the first game to explore the place of lesbians in a patriarchal, heteronormative society. Moonmist (1986), another investigative game, made this a crucial aspect of one of its four scenarios. However, Caper in the Castro is notable for being written from the perspective of the lesbian character. Whereas the events of Moonmist are merely tragic, Tracker McDyke reclaims her agency and directly confronts the oppressive system. Many of the interactions necessary to progress are resolved by gunfire, reclaiming this symbol of masculinity from hardboiled fiction and turning it into a woman's preferred instrument. Surprisingly, Caper in the Castro also avoids essentialisation, thanks to its detective's perpetually mocking gaze; although some passages are clumsier and rely on glib puns, they nonetheless overturn the insults and 'social stigma' [3].

While the somewhat cryptic nature of some of the interactions is regrettable, sometimes made more complex than necessary by the overly rigid text parsing system, Caper in the Castro remains an enjoyable game for its lack of concessions and the tribute it pays to San Francisco's LGBT community, which suffered reactionary violence. Despite the tragedy of the murders, there is something comforting about following a detective who ultimately succeeds in her mission, self-assured and with such a witty take on the world around her. Much like lesbian crime fiction, Caper in the Castro is perhaps less interested in exploring the gender and sexual identity of its protagonist than in the means available to fight injustice. Anna Wilson mentions the contradiction of the lesbian detective who somehow fits in with the rules of the social order while performing her homosexuality in public; Caper in the Castro avoids this dilemma: its answer seems to be, unequivocally and albeit naively, the revolution.

__________
[1] Anna Wilson, 'Death and the Mainstream: Lesbian Detective Fiction and the Killing of the Coming-Out Story', in Feminist Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, 1996, p. 252.
[2] There is an extensive historiographical debate about whether lesbian detective fiction can accommodate reformist, assimilationist and individualist positions without denying its radical heritage. The question is complex and deserves a close reading of the various novels of the period, but a central idea is that the lesbian detective, because of the female gaze, does not have the same lived experience of the streets as the hardboiled, misogynistic male detective – this is particularly explicit in Barbara Wilson's Sisters of the Road (1986). The traditional hardboiled view is that the detective's acts of justice are isolated and cannot change society; the feminine and lesbian view emphasises above all that 'violence is never random; there are no haven' (Anna Wilson, op cit., p. 266). See also Catharine R. Stimpson, 'Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English', in Critical Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 2, 1981, pp. 363-379 and Timothy Shuker-Haines, Martha M. Umphrey, 'Gender (De)Mystified: Resistance and Recuperation in Hard-Boiled Female Detective Fiction', in Jerome H. Delamater, Ruth Prigozy (ed.), The Detective in American Fiction, Film, and Television, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1998, pp. 71-82.
[3] Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1963.