Just played through the beta (Greek gangster, Nikokrates). This looks fantastic, and seems very historically accurate.
Question: why no other race options? IIRC, Numidians were also a popular choice as gladiators. Or Roman citizens would occasionally sell themselves into the arena.
I just read the demo and it is very well done and the fight mode is great, but you should also put in the options that help us depending on our stats
@anon49824592
Thanks for playing! Glad that you liked it 
Well, for one, having multiple races might complicate the back-end. I have considered the Roman route but if I do add it in, Iāll only add it in at the end because it is vastly different from the rest of the races. I will play around with the diversity once Iām more or less done with the overall story! Thanks for the suggestion though 
@Jesus
Thank you! Ah yes, I am trying to include intellect as a analyst type of stat ā being able to assess the situation. While strength would give you fighting prowess and charm would give you the ability to have more nuanced interactions/social observations.
Same for me, I think it will be cool especialy because of the weapon system
@Guillaume_Gilbert
I hear you, will update again once Iām done with the inventory system!
Looks good, still feeling the bite of that damn slave in the ship xD
@Josetrayamar
Did you manage to win though!
Also, if you dont mind me asking. Do you fight the combat challenging? Are the options too obvious/are the consequences logical?
I think itās perfect.
I literally had to do everything I was against to win that fight for my play through, I killed and I was selfish, which is a key to winning the fight.
@Guillaume_Gilbert
Thank you!
@AwkwardNature
Haha sounds like a lord of the flies, survival of the fittest experience. To be fair, there are ways to win without resorting to underhanded means but it might be slightly harder. It IS a brawl on a slave ship so morals/ethics are a distant concept I suppose!
Otherwise, how did you find the story? And perhaps what would you like to see in the future Just trying to get a ton of perspectives. I hope thatās okay with you!
Lol true, thatās why I had to be ruthless, my MC was doing the greater evil be selfish and share little of what can be spared. Hell MCās going for that slave brutal Robin Hood edition style.
I like the story so far, canāt wait to see how the rest goesš. I like how to the situation changes throughout different play through and the best friends you get with it. What looking for is fighting in the arena, to become a savage gladiator. And itās all good bro.
WƶW this is really interesting Itās got a new setting every time one restarts it thatās F-ing AWESOME 
Iāll surely be one of your first customers
Just a thought, but even in the threee areas you have for nationality there were dozens of different cultures, Large groups of Gaelic soldier settlers in Egypt, along with Greeks, Persians, different African groups, pheonecians from the ruins of Carthage, etc. While Greece had Thracians (which was included) Macedonians, Ilyrians, Pontic Persians, Scythians in the Bosporan kingdom, plus the Galatians in Anatolia. Gaul is easily represented by just Gauls and Germanics, mostly because we donāt have much info on the cultural make up of those peopleās and canāt describe the differences in the tribeās and peoples as well as we can in say, Egypt or Greece.
I love the three different settings, but if Iām curious if youāve thought about implementing different cultures in each setting? (Unsure how that would work)
@nauhziy Of course, I won. I like to solve the challenges the same way a rhino does: head on xD
@AwkwardNature I have been something like a super proud prince of the Saiyans. So when someone confronts me or my friends, I will seek and destroy that person. And when the guy-who-cant-be-mentioned throws the bread to the floor, I am too proud to eat it, even as I am starving. It not only an insult to my characterās pride, but also acceptance of his new status as a slave.
Of course, when offered some by my bff, I still refuse it. Its the same bread, with the same meaning. Then I will accept the betting, and clear the floor with the strongest slave in there, and get a decent meal, while still having most of my honor and pride intact xD
I cant say I find anything I would like to see changed. The only thing that may upset people with the same kind of character as me is choosing to face a direction for the battle, only to find they have either the sun facing them or the opponent.
As a proud upperclassman, I do not aprove of using advantages like the sun hitting my opponent in the eyes. And as a human being, I like to think my character smart enough as to not to start a fight looking at the sun if he can avoid it xD
By luck, I always had it to my side, except once to check what the rest of options did, so I cant complain, my prince of Saiyans says your game lives to fight another day xD
Our poor mcās if I recall my Roman slavery laws correctly there is no real way to ever get out of being gladiator, as for gladiators and certain other categories of slaves even āmanumissionā was effectively worthless due to their status as dediticii, which prevented them from ever becoming citizens and did not even enjoy the very minimum of legal protections after being āfreedā. Thereās of course also the issue of the branded foreheads.
Yah, Roman slavery was pretty rough especially when it came to the mines or gladiators, which are the two areas I have even a passing familiarity with. Iām interested in seeing if this goes into slavery much beyond the gladiatorial kind, it seems to be leaning that way, and I for one, and interested. Regardless of how accurate or not it is, Iām kind of giving a pass on an accurate representation of Roman slavery because a) I donāt even know what that is, and b) it would take a lot of reading to do it justice
Iām happy with how itās presented so far is what Iām saying, and Iām more interested in the theme and characters than accuracy at this point. Though believe me, if you do the research I absolutely will do it too so I can appreciate your effort properly.
Haha, Iām not the author of this thing, Iām only recalling what I remember off the cuff from my ancient history classes in highschool and the roman laws course in university. Iād have to dive into a university library to do proper research, Iām afraid.
But much like yourself Iām curious to how as to how much of the Roman slavery system the author is going to present will cleave as close to our best academic understandings of the reality of it and how much will be pure fiction.
Still if there are going realistic elements to it for verisimilitude then our mcās are indeed the second worst category of Roman slave you could be. Roman citizens admired successful gladiators, thatās true but they also never fully trusted them and therefore if emancipated at all they become the lowest of the low with even fewer rights then many actual slaves. So in that regard manumission was a trap for them since it was certainly no āfreedomā. Like you said the only class of slaves who had it worse were the damnati in metallum, who couldnāt even be legally freed and were expected to die in the mines.
On the other hand for many slaves the Roman system was ābetterā than say chattel slavery in Brazil, the US South or our own Dutch colonies. Unfortunately if the author values realism at all our mcās are not going to be some of those āluckyā slaves who can become nearly full citizens eventually, save for the passive political rights.
Which is hardly surprising because that sort of treatment those slaves got easily fits into an easy sort of black and white morality of Hollywood and fiction writers everywhere. The educated slaves who were doctors or accountants for the most part lived absolutely boring lives as far as Hollywood drama goes and in fact they lived significantly longer on average then the lower strata of the āfreeā population, which is where our poor mcās are going to end up if theyāre ever even manumitted under a semi-realistic portrayal of the Roman slavery system.
In any case there are actually a great number of people on these forums whose knowledge of ancient Rome in particular and ancient history in general far outstrips my own. Right @Bryce_Kaldwin @ruhenri and numerous others?
āYou underestimated Irisās capacity for vengence. You will get him back!ā
2 things about this: vengence is spelled vengeance and Iris was a girl in my playthrough and the book used him.
The gladiators were indeed too polluted to fully re-join society officially (as were the undertakers, for example). Still, there were some cases (not that few) of gladiators earning their freedom and going on to a full life of wealth and status. You got to remember that a good portion of the gladiators who earned their freedom where famous and went on to train other gladiators and even own them. The elite liked them occasionally at their parties (exotic and famous fellows, there is always a demand for those). The famous gladiators lived a relatively good and comfortable life, even during their period as gladiators. If you have a horse that earns you a huge amount of wealth, you treat him good and give him the best conditions possible, right? The best and most famous gladiators were the exact same.
Correction, Roman slavery was pretty rough when it came to the mines, galleys and gladiators, with the working of the fields being also not that nice (but much less rougher). In all the other situations, it was the best kind of slavery possible. Domestic and intellectual (teachers, philosophers, accountants, secretaries, etc) slaves had a much more comfortable life.
The domestic slavesā life wasnāt exactly great, but there were a bunch of free men that lived worse (a big part of the urban masses at the end of the republic, some poor farmers, etc.), and they didnāt had what would be called at the time āroughā or very physically demanding jobs. And besides, the closer contact with their masters usually gave them increased chances of being freed, and the Romans loved to free their slaves. It was not only the result of a much more personal contact that they had with a big chunk of their slaves (when compared to modern slavery) but also a matter of prestige. Something like āI am so good and so rich, so not caring with wealth [the roman mentality had a pretty negative opinion on wealth, as ironic as it may be], that I have freed xxx slaves during my lifeā.
What we might call intellectual slaves had a even better situation. They were treated well, they were precious property, some of them even had their own slaves and a very comfortable life, with some of them becoming incredibly wealthy after their release (which was even more common when compared to the other domestic slaves). We know of cases when free people sold themselves to slavery to have a better life and a better prospect of future. They werenāt exactly going to gladiators or something like that (those guys were basically war prisoners, deserters and criminals), they were being sold as philosophers of the roman elite, as tutors of the roman children, as close helpers of the roman individual members of the political, economical and cultural elite.
In the roman streets, it wasnāt a rare thing to see slaves better dressed and better fed than free men. It goes without saying that roman slavery was still obvious slavery, even if didnāt had the permanence, segregation/racism and general lack of conditions that modern slavery had. In the Roman World, if some of the people in this forum ever went miserable, they could sell themselves into slavery, and use their knowledge and educational formation to live a relatively comfortable life with not so bad prospects regarding their future.
Indeed.
Which indeed applies so long as I actually own the horse. Iād only care for the horses of others if they paid me, or well actually because I liked doing so after school when I was younger (and the dogs and the cats too), but donāt you go spreading that around now, people could start to think Iād gone soft. 
I certainly donāt dispute that a great many, perhaps even the vast majority of gladiators lived relatively comfortable lives in slavery, at least when not being killed or maimed.
Perhaps this is my professional deformation providing too much of a legalistic look at it, but considering that āmanumittedā former gladiators became dediticii, which was a status worse than that of most slaves, as youāve just explained above. So not seeing the status thing there, exotic pet of the elite maybe, but that shouldnāt be mistaken for any sort of real status, imho. From what I recall dediticii could also hardly own any property, or at least what they did have could always be taken away at a moments notice on the flimsiest of pretexts since they didnāt even enjoy the protection of the ius Latinum, much less that of actual citizens, as nominally āfreeā men.
So at best that would be a life of constant anxiety and more subtle terror and humilation in a gilded cage, I donāt think my mc would particularly like that, especially since he wants to get revenge on the noble brat who got him into the whole mess. Course my mc did run a robbing and stealing street gang but stillā¦
On the other hand this is fiction, so Iām kinda hoping the author is a bit more generous with the terms of the mcās possible manumission later on or else my mc will never get the satisfaction of ruining his former tormentor and their family enough that they hopefully have to sell themselves into slavery.