iPhone game features gay storyline

Factory Games is debuting its new iPhone game, Valet Hustle, in San Francisco. The company wants to generate buzz aomong the city’s sizable gay and lesbian community. The action puzzle game blends recreation with a unique backstory featuring both gay and lesbian protagonists.

"With Valet Hustle, we set out to not only create a game that is an absolute blast to play with incredible visuals and top notch audio, but we also wanted to make a social statement that gays and lesbians should have the same marital rights as heterosexuals," says Andrew Littlefield, co-founder and CEO of Factory Games. “Our inspiration for the backstory came from my good friend, Lulu Magdangal, a successful salon owner in San Francisco who surprisingly just happens to be a lesbian. With Lulu's help, we developed our unique, rags-to-riches backstory for Valet Hustle with a vastly different perspective from traditional videogames.”

Valet Hustle is an Anime-style 3-D action puzzle game with a simple premise: park cars, pickup customers and solve puzzles against a backdrop of rich, impatient car owners outside upscale nightclubs and restaurants. What makes Valet Hustle especially different from other games is the characters.

Depending on preference, players can take the role of either Ren or Akira, the young female or male offspring of a wealthy Japanese businessman. Both of these characters were kicked out of boarding school for openly kissing a fellow student of the same sex.

Ren and Akira are proud of who they are but have been forced to bow to family pressure and take over one of their father's businesses -- a parking valet company that services high-end nightclubs and restaurants. Ren and Akira are competent, capable characters with business savvy, but the game's players ultimately determine their success.

"It's cool to have been involved in the creation of Ren and Akira, two characters who triumph over prejudice by simply being themselves," says Lulu Magdangal, a story development consultant for the game. "I can only hope that Valet Hustle is the start of a trend and more game companies embrace both the gay and lesbian communities."

The company will give a portion of the proceeds from the Valet Hustle to Human Rights Campaign. Find out more at ValetHustle.com.