PLEASE NOTE: This is a five out five hot pepper 
game. That means contains more explicit descriptions of sex than other Heart’s Choice titles. The game is also on the shorter side at 100,000 words. There will not be substantial word count added during beta and we’re not looking for feedback on the length. The PC is a woman, and largely is romancing male characters; there are scenes with other women as well but no female NPCs are specifically romance options. If any of that means the game is not your cup of tea, please do not apply for this beta.
Beneath Versailles, desire still reigns. Indulge your ambition and taste a secret society’s most decadent pleasures while secrets decide your fate and history is reenacted behind locked doors.
Silk and Secrets: Rites of Pleasure is an interactive erotic novel by A. Simon. It’s entirely text-based, 100,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination. Our Heart’s Choice spice level for this game is 5/5 peppers.
When you begin your research into Versailles’ decadent royal history, you uncover secrets far greater than you ever imagined. A society called the Court of Pleasures secretly carries on the hedonistic rituals of Louis XVI’s court. Initiated into the society as the Duchess of Sighs, you must decide what you are willing to trade for access, influence, and truth. Will you investigate the society from within, gathering evidence to expose it and secure your place in history? Or will you embrace your new role, surrendering to the pleasures, power, and protection the society offers?
And most importantly of all, will you manipulate others’ desire for your advantage, indulge in sexual pleasure for its own sake, or find true love amid the society’s erotic rituals?
Marcus, the palace security guard who brought you into the society, has broad muscular shoulders, a sultry gaze, and a wickedly talented tongue. He’ll let you take control and go down on you in public - or, if you want, he’ll dominate and teach you a thousand new tricks. Your fellow scholar Jules has fantastic wealth and privilege - not to mention fantastic blue eyes and even better fashion. A connection with his family could be your ticket to power - and a night with him means acrobatic tricks and burning intensity. Or there’s the smooth-voiced man known only as the Duke of Dishabille, masked and elegant. He’s learned countless historical forms of debauchery during his tenure in the society: let him introduce you to his collection of toys.
Or, find pleasure for a night or just a few minutes with any one of the society’s other members of any gender. But beware: all knowledge comes at a price.
- Play as a woman; have relationships with men and liaisons with people of all genders
- Choose a persona at your initiation - cunning courtesan, saucy barmaid, or innocent maiden - and act it out in sexual scenes
- Slip into hidden chambers and uncover dark secrets that have been concealed for centuries.
- Play by the Court of Pleasure’s rules and become a society favorite, or defy their strictures for the sake of your own ambition
Will you expose the truth… or surrender to the pleasure of being exposed?
Directions for beta testing:
Email us, beta AT choiceofgames for access.
DO NOT POST ASKING WHAT THE BETA EMAIL ADDRESS IS. The first test to becoming a beta tester is inferring what it is based on how we describe it above.
Do not send DMs/PMs through the forum mail system, Discord, text message, carrier pigeon, or any other method than email.
When you send your EMAIL, include:
- the game you want to test in the Subject line of the email.
- your forum-name
- your real name (first and last). Please indicate if your family/surname comes first as well.
Beta testers’ names are listed in the game’s credits, which are accessed with the “About” link you’ll see within the game. If you don’t want to appear in the credits, or you want to be credited under a name other than your real one, please let us know.
Do not email us multiple times about joining a beta. If you don’t email us as soon as we post a beta, you go into a queue. As we post new drafts, we admit more people from the queue. This beta is short term and limited so we may not get to you.
When you have been admitted to the beta, we will send you a link, a username, and a password as a reply to your email.
When you have feedback to submit:
- Return feedback as part of the same email thread where you were admitted. Copying beta@choiceofgames on that email is the best way to make sure your comments are seen as soon as possible.
- Please send screenshots or copy/pasted quotes whenever you can; it helps us track down whatever observation you’re making. In particular, the author may see things that you don’t, and/or the screenshot may contain more information than you realize.
- If you’re submitting feedback using the Bug/Submit button in the game, make sure you include your handle/name in the body of the email. The Submit button obscures your email address, and I can’t give you credit for feedback if I don’t know who you are.
A few more notes:
- You cannot be testing two games at once. If you are already testing one game, send in feedback on that game before you apply to another. If you apply for multiple games at the same time, you will likely be admitted first to whichever game has testing slots open up first, and we won’t be able to admit you to the other one until you send in your comments for that one. (From an admin standpoint, it’s easiest if you don’t apply to more than one game at once – applying to multiple games makes it more likely that we’ll miss admitting you to one of them.)
- If you’re admitted as a tester but realize you won’t be able to send in feedback for that game, please let us know! You won’t be penalized in any way - we’ll just take you off the list of testers for that game. But if you sign up to test a game and don’t send comments or withdraw, it will affect your chances of being admitted to future betas.
- There’s no standard length of time for a beta testing period to last, and we usually don’t know exactly how long a game will be in beta when it opens. The best way to know how long a beta will be open is to follow the thread for updates.
- It’s fine to send multiple feedback emails, but if you have a lot of quick comments, it’s easier to keep track of them if you bundle them into one email.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
We’re looking for “high level” and “low level” feedback. Not mid-level feedback.
Low-level = typos and continuity errors. A continuity error is when a character’s gender flips, or someone comes back from the dead, or you run into a plotline that just doesn’t make sense (because it’s probably a coding error). For these low-level issues, screenshots are very helpful. If you see a problem, take a screenshot, or copy and paste the text that is in error, and email that.
“High level” feedback has to do with things like plot, pacing, and characters. “Scene A didn’t work for me because x, y, and z,” is useful feedback. “B character was entirely unsympathetic, because u, w, and v,” is also useful feedback.
“Mid-level” feedback describes things like grammar, style, word choice, or the use of commas. As I said above, I do not want mid-level feedback. In particular, DO NOT WRITE TO ME ABOUT COMMAS.
“I had a great time and saw only a few spelling errors,” is not useful feedback. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that results in you not being given access to future betas.
Some examples of useful feedback :
- In Choice of the Dragon, you get to choose what type of wings you have: leather or scaled. Someone wrote in and asked about having feathered wings. Great suggestion! Done!
- In “The Eagle’s Heir,” someone asked about Eugenie. They said that the romance moved too quickly–because she only appeared in the last third of the game–and wished they could have had an opportunity to meet her earlier. So the authors added an opportunity to meet her and start the romance earlier in the game (in a scene that already existed).
- In “Demon Mark: A Russian Saga” several people commented on how the PC’s parents were unsympathetic, so the authors added a choice or two to deepen the relationship with the parents in the first chapter, to help better establish their characters.
- Pointing out a specific choice and saying, “this is who I imagined my character was at this particular moment, and none of these options seemed right for me. I would have liked an option to do X instead,” is also really helpful feedback.
- If you choose an #option and then the results of that #option don’t make sense. Like, if you thought an #option might test one stat, but it seems to have tested a different one.