Games You Might Have Missed: Secret Little Haven

Secret Little Haven is Victoria Dominowski’s game about fandom, coding, and figuring out identities released January 30th, 2018.

You play as Alex, a closeted trans girl in 1999 who loves a Sailor Moon-esque show, and hanging out with her friends on the internet. The game entirely takes place on Alex’s computer. You navigate through conversations with her friends on an AIM-like chat client and interact with different programs depending on what they ask of you. You might need to check out the forum you all hang out on for info or gossip, or maybe you need to pull up the terminal so your friend Laguna can teach you some coding basics, which become essential to the game’s puzzles later on. There are also fun side programs you can play around with like a Tamagachi clone and a doll-maker.

The story advances through these conversations, and the more intense ones you have with your father.This is where the content warnings come into play. Conversations with John involve gas-lighting, loss of control, and are generally rife with conflict. There are also flash effects during these sequences, but you can turn them off if they bother you or make these sections difficult to play. Despite the difficulty of these conversations, Secret Little Haven isn’t a tragedy. It’s a great mix of honesty about how hard dealing with these things can be, and hopeful empowerment dressed up in cute 90’s nostalgia.