Scarlet Sorceress (full beta open, 372k words), Romance, High-fantasy

[ChanceOfFire]

It’s done. I’m probably crazy to do this. It’s been uploaded on itch.

Itch link is here.

This build has passed quicktest and randomtest.

Find love and adventure in the Kingdom of Seraphine. Solve mysteries, go on quests and work to resolve a conflict between two factions. Go for romantic outings with your companions, and perhaps decide the one for you.

Inspired by otome visual novels, Scarlet Sorceress is a 370,000-word interactive novel, set with cuteness and charm in a fantasy romance world. Play as a sorceress, with the freedom to customize your name, specialization and appearance.

Blessed with the gift of magic, you are a sorceress, able to manipulate the power of fire. Sorcery is tightly controlled in the Kingdom of Seraphine, forcing spell casters to live under the watch of the Guardian Order, or live as outlaw mages. Living in the Eterna Forest, away from the city, with your pet cat, you soon find yourself tangled in a conflict between both factions.

Romance your childhood companion, your Guardian protector or one of two mysterious mages.

• Play as a sorceress. Romance male or female characters.
• Choose from four romance interests, two male and two female, as well as another two minor romance interests.
• Customize your appearance with the magic mirror. Use different styles to optimize your stats, or choose the Blessing of Inner Fire to customize your appearance without worrying about stats.
• Collect different jewelry stats, each with different impacts on the game.
• Play the game on standard mode for a traditional stat-management experience, or opt for story mode to play the game without having to worry about stats.
• In addition to the main storyline, enjoy two mystery-based sections and ten side adventures.

Feedback

I’m quite flexible on this. Small things like typos, inconsistencies, bugs and glitches would be useful to report, as I tend to miss a lot of things during self-playtesting. Screenshots or text snippets would be useful for typos.

If you would like to point out high-level things like continuity errors, places where you would have liked to have more choices, feedback on plot and characters and so on, that will be welcome too.

If you don’t have any feedback but would like to leave general opinions on the game or characters, that’s fine too. I’d definitely like to hear opinions.

Romances

Sofie Hawthorne - A knight and your close childhood companion and your confidant. Sofie is loyal, supportive and always by your side.

Gaius Grimhammer - Your assigned Guardian. As a sorceress, you are not permitted to travel around without a Guardian to observe you. Still, Gaius is caring and loving towards his charges. Relationships between Guardians and their charges are discouraged, but that doesn’t matter… right?

Mystria Darkstorm - A mysterious sorceress, gifted with air. Despite a ruthless streak, she seems to have a compassionate side to her. Also, it appears that she has taken a liking to you.

Elbrus - A sorcerer who hides a dark secret. Cunning and reserved, his background is a mystery. One which will be unraveled, and which could play a critical role in the conflict between the Guardians and Mages.

Minor Romances (Spoliers, I may expand these depending on interest. These can be done alongside the main romances.)

Ari the Younger - A playful sorceress, gifted with water, who lives on the outskirts of Seraphine City, away from the rules of the Guardians. Ari enjoys the outdoors and adventure, away from rules and restrictions.

Lord Darrin Whitecastle - A young Guardian-Commander and a member of the powerful Whitecastle House. Darrin finds more fulfilment as a Guardian, preferring to stay out of the sordid affairs of his noble house, but getting tangled in them anyway.

Content Warnings
This is a romance game. There are some mild depictions of intimacy and nudity, but nothing very explicit.

Note: I am planning to release a major update around 5-7AM Eastern Time (9-11AM UTC) on Apr 19, 2025. This might disrupt existing playthroughs and save files.

[AletheiaKnights]

I’d say a cute romance with elemental magic was right up my alley, and that’s definitely the truth, but you really had me at “pet cat.”

[HeWhoSees]

Your first demo of the game is of 372k words?

[ChanceOfFire]

I hope it’s long enough.

[AletheiaKnights]

It’s not really a “first demo” of the kind that most WIPs get, where it’s just a chapter or two. This is a completed game that’s been posted for the mandatory testing period before submission for publication.

[ChanceOfFire]

Meanwhile, I’m providing all the art assets in the interest of transparency, and also to provide an example of a full set of cover art for a HG release. (Art made from pixabay assets.)

ICON:

TITLE:

SPLASHSCREEN:

STEAM:

[attolia]

Wow! Thanks for sharing.

[ChanceOfFire]

About 14 hours after the game was published on itch, these are the analytics at the time if anyone is curious. (Yep, this WIP thread did most of the heavy lifting.)

[ChanceOfFire]

If I may be upfront, does anyone have any comment at this point? The link seems to have gotten a fair bit of clicks as of this writing, but it’s still kinda silent here. I don’t know if people are still working their way through a 372k word game, or if this is a sign to pack up the shop.

Also, I’m now suspecting that it may be necessary to ask this question sooner or later, so I’ll pick sooner. Is there anyone who would be interested if not for the gender-lock? If anyone here is insistent that this game should have gender choice… let’s just say it’s something I’m willing to allow on the discussion table at this point.

---

On a more cheerful note, Scarlet Sorceress is now in third place of the New & Popular section under Interactive Fiction on itch, so I guess that’s one win.

[sana]

Hihi, I’m still going through the game and wanted to give my full thoughts later when I’ve finished a playthrough, but I will say this: it’s been such a nice and lovely experience! I do wish the choices led to more detailed text though but that’s my only early suggestion (for example, when I chose that my cat was being nice because he likes me, I got a single line afterwards about it. If it was meant for comedy ofc leave it in, but these are just my thoughts)

About the genderlock, I know that there’s a good amount of people in the communtiy who are put off by genderlocks outside of their preferred gender to play as. If you were to expand the gender choice, it would probably get more eyeballs on the project. This game is feminine, but I’m certain there’s male players who would enjoy that. I haven’t really encountered anything that made me think this game “needs” the genderlock (not yet anyway, I may be proven wrong lol) but if you intended a female experience and it’s essential to your vision, then I say stick with your guns

[LeannaMandragoran]

Hello @ChanceOfFire
The game looks interesting. How ever İch is not much accessible for the blind. Can you consider uploading all so in CoGDemos?

[ChanceOfFire]

@sana

Hihi, I’m still going through the game and wanted to give my full thoughts later when I’ve finished a playthrough, but I will say this: it’s been such a nice and lovely experience! I do wish the choices led to more detailed text though but that’s my only early suggestion (for example, when I chose that my cat was being nice because he likes me, I got a single line afterwards about it. If it was meant for comedy ofc leave it in, but these are just my thoughts)

Thanks. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I could expand that section. My style was quite minimalist when I worked on the earlier chapters over a year ago, so I might review and rewrite some of the text.

@sana

then I say stick with your guns

I guess I’ll stick with my guns for now.

@LeannaMandragoran

The game looks interesting. How ever İch is not much accessible for the blind. Can you consider uploading all so in CoGDemos?

CoGDemos

You should be able to use this link. This was what I used for personal testing, and it should have the latest files now. It’s set to private, so you’ll need to use the link for access (i.e. it won’t show up on the public games list). Code-sharing is enabled.

[LeannaMandragoran]

Thanks.

[Cecilia_Rosewood]

@ChanceOfFire

If I may be upfront, does anyone have any comment at this point? The link seems to have gotten a fair bit of clicks as of this writing, but it’s still kinda silent here.

Have mercy. It’s been one day I plan on giving it a good read through for feedback, but my usual speed is, like, one or two months per round of feedback I unfortunately didn’t have time this weekend, but I’ll try to squeeze in some reading time after work.

[Neverland45]

I definitely do think having a gender option would open the game up to more people, but also it’s whatever you want to do. I’ll always say don’t compromise the vision of your game just for more clicks! BUT on the flip side, genderlocked games do sometimes struggle in the IF community. Not always though, and there’s a couple examples I can think of right now that have a HUGE following despite being genderlocked (the infinity series comes to mind lol)
Although, from a personal standpoint, I think having the gender option would be nice! But it’s also whatever you wanna do, ya know? Genrderlocked games can certainly still be successful regardless. I mean, Like I said, the infinity series is absolutely a testament to that.

EDIT: laughing because I’m sleep deprived and I kept calling it the infinity series instead of the infinite sea lol

EDIT 2: Hi again! I should clarify I meant the cog/hosted/Twine audience of the IF community, and not like, the entire IF community if that makes sense!

[judy]

True, tho The Infinite Sea series started a long time ago, if I remember right, there wasnt the same demand or expectation for gender options for hosted games at ghe time. The COG in house games having gender choice was a surprise for me at the time. Its very different now, people have higher expectations.

[judy]

@ChanceOfFire

Just a heads up, you’ll get more responses if you tell people what kind of feedback you want. E.g.

Low end - grammar, spelling, code glitching

High end - whether people think plot works, character portrayals work, the game dynamics work e.g. debating whether good to consider gender options if possible

[AletheiaKnights]

@Neverland45

genderlocked games do sometimes struggle in the IF community

I don’t think it’s so much the IF community in general as it is this little corner of it. There’s a lot of IF out there in which the player has little or no ability to customize the PC in any way, and in some cases the PC is such a distinctive individual creation as to be a major selling point for the game.

CoG was founded with the intention of publishing games in which (almost) anyone could see themself reflected, at least in terms of gender and sexuality. They’ve built a fanbase among people who don’t always feel represented elsewhere. I love them for that. But their particular recipe is not, and never has been, the One True Way to do interactive fiction. They would be the first to say so. They’ve admitted in interviews that building their brand on inclusivity means there are worthy, important stories that can’t be published by their flagship imprint.

[Neverland45]

Honestly that’s my bad. I didn’t mean to speak for the whole IF community but more so the cog/hosted/Twine side of things. I just didn’t really know how else to refer to what I was talking about!

[ChanceOfFire]

@judy

Just a heads up, you’ll get more responses if you tell people what kind of feedback you want. E.g.

Good point, thank you. I plan to be flexible, but I’ll also detail some useful forms of feedback.

@AletheiaKnights

CoG was founded with the intention of publishing games in which (almost) anyone could see themself reflected, at least in terms of gender and sexuality. They’ve built a fanbase among people who don’t always feel represented elsewhere. I love them for that. But their particular recipe is not, and never has been, the One True Way to do interactive fiction. They would be the first to say so. They’ve admitted in interviews that building their brand on inclusivity means there are worthy, important stories that can’t be published by their flagship imprint.

Well said.

@Neverland45

Although, from a personal standpoint, I think having the gender option would be nice! But it’s also whatever you wanna do, ya know? Genrderlocked games can certainly still be successful regardless. I mean, Like I said, the infinity series is absolutely a testament to that.

I appreciate the feedback. For now, I’m probably still keeping the gender lock… but I’m also open to listening to other opinions.

Edit: Details are up.