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A New Game from Arcanist

Quite a while ago, I (ThaumX) stepped away from adult modding, writing erotica, and contributing to various adult projects. Instead I focused my energy on making Accidental Woman. There were several reasons for this, but most of it boiled down to wanting to make the kind of game I wanted to play. A life sim but faster-paced, set in an interesting sandbox of a world, with a lot of real simulation. Detailed bodies in a time when all but a few games (mostly furry) games used only a handful of variables like "breast size", "ass size", and "height". I wanted to have transformations that weren't furry or just a small range of breast size values. Enough of you enjoyed my vision enough to support it, and that's let me hire more people and keep pushing forward. We've had several "firsts" in adult gaming, and though it didn't always work out (hello 2018 NPC neural net), I think it has had a positive impact. Just as we've been inspired bu games that came before us, we've been able to inspire others--including some that are now more popular and successful than AW--and that's wonderful. And we're going to keep moving forward with AW, and keep striving to make it a better game.

A lot of those same feelings have gone into Chained Ether, except this time it's more than just me. We started working on imagining the game all the way back at the start of 2021. Thinking about the design, game play, the setting, and most importantly the kind of experience we wanted to provide. Chained Ether is not just another AW in a different setting, in fact they are radically different. Rather than a life simulation, it's a trade and exploration game. Inspired by older sailing and pirate games, but also by more modern games like Sunless Sea. I wanted to provide locations that are more than just a port to dock, they're interesting (and very adult-oriented) worlds of their own. I also wanted to focus on interesting characters and their stories. While AW focuses mostly on the player character and the situations they get themselves into, CE focuses on other characters, their stories, and how the player character fits into them. We can also explore lots of sexy content and plenty of kinks from that perspective too.

As you visit different cities you'll meet different officers looking for a ship. You'll be able to hire them and shape their story. Is that quartermaster a natural dominatrix, or is she actually grasping for a relationship to dedicate herself to? The goal is rich characters and relationships with them. We currently have six officers with a full set of art and planned stories. The first release version will have only a limited amount of content for them, while the officer you start your adventure with has more content in the game. There's another officer with a decent amount of art that is the sister of one of those. We'll be working on the stories for this cast to begin with, but we'll eventually start adding more. In addition to officer romances, you'll also meet unique characters in each city, and quite often that'll open up the possibility of even more sexy times.

Game play is 2d set in a high-angle 3d world. You'll sail your airship between cities, though first you'll need to find them. Each time you play the cities will be procedurally placed according to several factors, which will result in a different kind of trading environment each game. Though not implemented yet, eventually we'll have the prices of slaves and trade goods change with time. Pirates and other... things.. are waiting in the skies. As with most naval battles, position is important. Will you line up the perfect broadside, or take a risk with a more angled shot? Do your outfit your ship for long range or close quarters fights, or should you focus on getting a bigger cargo hold and perhaps a slave milking module or slave training apparatus? What if you bought a surplus navy ship and outfitted it for cargo?


A rocket broadside. Your crew does the aiming, you choose when to fire.

I have absolutely no pretenses about CE being one of the best trading game out there, though of course we'll do our best. Our goal is to make a game that's actually reasonably fun to play as you explore the world and it's characters. I think too many adult games just aren't very fun, even though they may have great content. There's a lot of grinding, unoriginal rpg style combat, and often times both. Some games that are actually reasonably fun wind up making the cardinal sin of only having lewd content when you lose the game. We worked hard to devise a way to have an adult game that isn't a slog, doesn't have a lot of repetitive grinding, and doesn't require you to choose between content and game play.

Another issue I really wanted to address in adult games is the VN format for storytelling. There are reasons why the format is the way it is... but it can become annoying for reading a lot of content. We're trying something new, with a text column on one side that allows you to read several lines of dialog between each click or choice, rather than clicking for each line or trusting a sketchy auto system. It's still a work in progress, it turned out to be more of a challenge than expected in a world where everything is either a text bubble, a VN scene, or some combination of the two. We're also working on some workflow automation so that allows us to quickly turn content written in markup in plain .txt files into VN segments with minimal effort.

The first released version is going to be pretty rough. Only the most basic mechanics, lacking a lot of polish as any super-early alpha build does, but hopefully you'll find it has a lot of promise.