Sometimes, my family or my friends that I’m not all that close to ask me what I’m doing with my life these days. When I say I’m working on a video game, most of them let their eye glaze over and don’t ask any further questions. But some of my family and most of my friends are gamers to one degree or another, and because I’m not prepared to tell them about Harem Collector, I usually talk about Sangreal.
So, what is Sangreal, other than a decoy to save my pride? Sangreal begins with you playing a prince or princess of the kingdom of Cerulia. It is your official debut on the eve of your fourteenth birthday, where you will finally take up your responsibilities as crown prince or princess. Your parents ask you to join them in an anteroom room the big ceremony, so they can share with you the secrets of the royal family… but as you wait for them to join you, the general of your father’s armies stages a coup, and you only escape with the help of your personal bodyguard and the court magician.
You escape through the castle, pausing only long enough to watch the execution of your father, mother and uncle at the hands of the usurper. Upon finding a secret passage out of the castle, the court magician chooses to head back inside, to find your character’s royal sibling who was not among those executed and so, must still be alive, somewhere, in hiding. Your bodyguard and you escape the castle and wait outside…but the court magician never returns. You and your protector leave, and find shelter with the Wandering Folk, a society of nomads that travel the kingdom while working as tinkers, merchants and adventurers. This is how you live for the next four years, and on your 18th birthday, your guardian finally allows you to guide your own destiny, swearing to stand by you and protect you always.
This is where your character is at the end of the introduction- accompanied only by a single ex-knight and in a far-flung province of your former kingdom, you guide your character’s own destiny as you choose to do… whatever. Overthrow the usurper and reclaim your kingdom? Well, maybe, if that’s what you want to do. But you can also seek to master magic, devote yourself to the church, become a merchant and live a life of luxury… whatever.
So, why am I telling you all this? Well, now that things are kind of settled and I’m being productive again, I want to spend a little more time on Sangreal, like maybe one day out of five. I’ll probably give it for free to backers while it develops, but my intention, I think, would be to distribute it on Steam, eventually.
Anyway, I hope you don’t mind that I’m still working on this little side project. Talk to you guys later!
That sounds cool. And great way to avoid the awkwardness that is “Well the video game I design has you going around the land, coercing, extorting, enslaving, women to be part of the main character’s harem while he does adventurer stuff that isn’t really heroic and isn’t really so much his destiny as he just wants to have a harem. “
I can relate to your reluctance in explaining to people that you make/play erotic gaming.
Sadly northern America has some pretty backwards ideas on sexuality. While there are more than a few people here that are open minded enough to accept such ideas, we have a lot of stupid people here that would scream “rape culture”, arguably just to get attention because they know that if you add the word(s) “sex” or “sexual” at the beginning of any sentence people will actually pay attention to you, even if you’re full of shit and not really worth listening to….
Thankfully I think the people that stayed silent for so long are starting to “come out of the closet” and openly express their dissatisfaction with those that would take away their freedom of thought or expression for their own selfish reasons.
As for the new title your working on, I say go for it. Nothing wrong with starting to the lay out the groundwork for another game.
Rape culture is a pretty complicated subject. I know there is a long-standing problem with men, irl, feeling that women are objects that exist only to be evaluated and please men- a problem that is improving, and has improved drastically, but still isn’t in a great place. Just look at all this Gamergate garbage, and this deeply built-up resentment over a group of women (Sarkeesian et al) expressing their opinions, it’s hard to find a justification for that kind of extremely shitty behaviour without touching on sexism. Or, hell, Halloween- there aren’t many costumes for women that aren’t “Slutty X” or “Slutty Y”. Don’t get me wrong, I love slutty Halloween costumes, but I also think women deserve more options.
Of course, video game women aren’t real, and I trust players of Harem Collector that they can tell the difference between a virtual woman that is created for their objectification, and a real woman that is not. Maybe that’s optimistic, but I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than go through life with a miserable outlook on the world.
The reason I keep silent on my chosen profession has more to do with the public perception of hentai. Despite the fact that draw/rendered images don’t involve victimization or exploitation of a real actress, has no danger of any catching an STI or being underage or being blackmailed into doing sex acts for someone else’s benefit, there is a pervasive opinion that drawn/rendered pornography is more pathetic. Video games that feature sex are viewed with that same idea that they are more pathetic than regular pornography. I want to fight those perceptions, but for now I must charge my lasers- it’ll be a lot easier to justify my opinions on these things when I’m more successful.
I understand what you mean. We’ve come along way in our society, but we have a long way to go. Keep up your optimism and good luck! Who knows, maybe your efforts will one day have started something. 🙂
That sounds real neat. I didn’t know you had another project. I’d be very interested to see some non-H work of yours. I like the open ended story options idea. Good luck on that project as well!
That sounds real neat. I didn’t know you had another project. I’d be very interested to see some non-H work of yours. I like the open ended story options idea. Good luck on that project as well!
I hope that you gave them a different name
Otherwise if any of them google for “sangreal” they will find this blog and this post.
If you haven’t used a different name. delete this post ASAP. you can repost it with a sanitized name afterwards
Hello. What is Sangreal? Is it a game? Where can I find and download it?