Walk into the hot pink entrance of Elm City Games in the Ninth Square section of New Haven and enter a world of escape, fantasy and community — and a welcoming space for LGBTQ+ people headed by its like-minded staff.

In the main room there’s an endless selection of games for sale that run the gamut from the classics — The Game of Life, Clue and more variations of Monopoly that you ever knew existed  —  to games from other countries, games inspired by films (“Star Wars” has an entire wall), to games that celebrate fantasy, test relationships and reflect LGBTQ+ life, created by LGBTQ+ designers.

It’s Wednesday evening on Orange Street which means it’s game-testing night and over in one of the storefront rooms is a group of players trying out a new tabletop game, Knights of the Realm, led by Larry Bogucki of Middletown and Larry Swan of Stamford who created it.

Go down a hall decorated with whimsical designs by local artists and into a side room and you’ll find another group of competitors hunched over tables, focused on playing the same game, but in different round-robin couplings, over the course of the night.

In yet another room, there’s a library featuring more than 1,500 titles where anyone can just take whatever interests them of the shelf, sit down — and, well, let the games begin.

Elm City Games is the creation of Matt Fantastic (that’s his legal name), 39, who, with his ex-wife Trish Loter, own and manage the downtown complex since 2019.

“Games are for everybody,” says Fantastic, who, with his shoulder-length hair, big grin and tats could be conjured as a knight’s cool sidekick in Dungeons and Dragons.

“Not every game is for everybody,” he says, “but there is a game for everyone.”

That includes LGBTQ+ players, too, whether its Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Star Crossed (‘the two-player game of forbiodden love”) or Fog of Love, which has editions for straight and gay fans.

Elm City Games began in 2016 in the back of a Chapel Street coffee house by Fantastic and Loter. They would charge a fee for folks to play games from their massive collection. It became so popular they eventually…|CONTINUED|