Crossguard is a game written in the RAGS engine, by Nuke. A dark, psychological horror game, it focuses on themes involving abuse, sexism, and imprisonment. Existing themes include BDSM and violence. Themes include physical transformation and pronounced mental changes. Content which may disturb or displease players includes: rape, violence, anthropomorphic characters.
You are a Grand Magus of the Crossblade, the royal guard of the standing army. During an attack by an invading force, you are taken prisoner, and awake a slave to the enemy. Your objective is to escape imprisonment without allowing yourself to be broken either physically or mentally.
You, the player.
Infantryman, an invader whom you fight.
Officer, your first tormentor.
King, the head of your country.
Barber-surgeon, the head of the hospital.
v1.02:
A furry fantasy story where you are a slave and your resistance will either secure your submission in servitude or find a way to turn events to your advantage.
Almost no images are used in this game and it is entirely a text-based game. The story is fairly well written with not too much purple prose, so you will always know what is going on around you and for the event you have found yourself in. Transformations in the game are limited and are tied to your resistance, but the majority is focused on mental changes from your captivity to fit with the story.
Truthfully I found it alright to play but I doubt I'll return again as I never felt hooked in. My avatar seemed a little naïve, my captors were mostly one-dimensional and while the NPCs that got the most focus did have a little bit of life to them, I knew I'd hit the Eight Deadly Words of story crafting and just finished my runs through the game to find the endings as quick as I could.
Mixed bag. If you like Anthro/Furries, you'll probably get more out of it but for me as a horror fan it was good for killing some time and that was it.
This is a very well written game. To those having trouble running it, you have to first find a version 2.0 or 2.2 copy of RAGS and install that, then install the newer version (try 2.14 or the latest) as well. Run from the classic version.
Note: Crossguard, like many older RAGS games, needs an older version of the RAGS Player to work. Because RAGS is a goddamn mess. I've tested it with version 2.4.14, and that works.
Note #2: Crossguard isn't really worth the hassle. This isn't a strike against Crossguard, really; the writing is perfectly competent. But the list of games worth installing RAGS just to play is extremely small.
eh its pretty complete and has very few errors but really there just isnt much too it.
would be nice if the paragraphs wernt so broken up into sections that you had to "click to contunue" through and instead were one large group and maybe add some color coding for the speach.
If only there was a better download, the game stops and freezes in the first dream scene where you disrobe.
