Debasing Grounds is a web-browser-based RPG and social simulator set in a post-apocalyptic world. You can play it online or download the latest version and open the Debasing Grounds.html file using your preferred browser. The game is compatible with various platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The game is currently in alpha version.
Debasing Grounds contains graphic and dark material that can be unsettling or triggering to some people. The game contains descriptions of non-consensual sex, bondage, sexual humiliation and physical abuse. You must be 18 or older to play this game. The game focuses on dark themes and offers different paths where players can explore dominant or submissive questlines and sandbox mechanics. Some of the most developed themes are BDSM, feminization, humiliation, non-con, dub-con and pet play. The game includes feminization, sissification and transgenderism themes.
Your name is (X) and you are a (X)-year-old (boy/girl) (selectable from age 18). Your skin is (X) and you have (X) eyes. You have (X)-long (X) hair. You are of (X)-height and (X)-built, with a (X) chest.
A gust of cool air brings you back to reality, making you shiver. Your surroundings snap into focus, an unfamiliar landscape that leaves you feeling more lost than before.
You open your eyes to a strange town, with a mix of new and old buildings, some of which have been hastily patched up with different materials. The newer construction seems to be done with bricks and tiles, yet the older structures appear to be composed of metal and concrete. A massive wall made of mud and metal bars surrounds the town.
A few strangers appear walking down the street, wearing a mixture of modern clothes and tattered robes. When they come close enough, you hear them speaking your language. Their faces are rugged and unwelcoming.
There are more than 300 NPCs the player can encounter in the world.
Players find themselves in a desolate world with no clear direction. Your priorities should probably find shelter and make some cash. Don't stray too far at night!
Alternative starts:
Version 0.5.0: "NPC inventory, Customization, Rough Gangbangs and Residence Guards" Update is now available for free at http://debasinggrounds.com/
Version 0.5.1: "Administration's Spy, Spy Interrogation and Digging Works" Update is now available for supporters in both SubscribeStar (preferred) https://subscribestar.adult/debasing_grounds and Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Debasing_Grounds.
Here's the changelog for Version 0.5.1: "Administration's Spy, Spy Interrogation and Digging Works":
Administration spy:
- Players can go through the Red Gate if they have an artifact to deliver
- Delivering artifacts is rewarded with 50 e-coin
- New billboard, TV, computer ads and chat options about artifact retrieval
- It's possible to steal an ID from the curator's warehouse (while checking the books)
- After delivering 3 artifacts, players are introduced to Kaelin
- Kaelin will give players an ID if they don't have one already
- If they have a stolen ID (Assuna's, Roy's, Olaf's...) Kaelin will give them a proper one
- Once players are working for Kaelin, the can go in and out the Red Gate without going through the guards
- Players can now visit Kaelin's Hall after having meeting her
- New quest by Kaelin to infiltrate Synapse Corp
- Players can find out information by meeting Raul during Olena's dinner parties or gaining access to LINK Software (through Caspian's quest)
- New quest by Kaelin to infiltrate Isara Inc
- Players can find out information by gaining access to Isara Genomics and entering Isara's Vauls, or accessing Isara's DB
- When completing each quest, players are rewarded with a reputation boost with the Administration and +20 trust with Kaelin
- After completing one of those subquests and reaching trust 40 (with two quests or other means), players can join the Administration under Kaelin, with a weekly pay of 30 e-coin
- Players need to report to Kaelin weekly
- To satisfy Kaelin, players can bring in artifacts or report the activities of Isara Inc, Synapse Corp or the Thulle Deviants if they belong to those factions
- Players can also feed lies to Kaelin
- Feeding actual information about other factions has a chance of resulting in a reputation penalty against that faction after several days
- Feeding lies to Kaelin has a chance of a reputation penalty against the Administration and a trust fall
- If players fail to report to Kaelin, they are brought to her by guards, with an additional reputation and trust loss
- At trust zero, Kaelin will enslave players in the digging works
- Players can now find artifacts at Main and North Street and East Street manors lootboxes
- Players can buy artifacts at the Bargain Corner and sell them in the pawn shop
- New subquest given by Olena as part of 'The Town's Council' quest
- Players can get an artifact from Olena's new quests
- Changed some of Kaelin's features (hair color, default clothing)
- New quest given by Aria (Thulle Deviants) to enter the keep grounds and take a picture of Nerra
- Completing the quest gives access to the Keep Grounds and to joining Elekra's team without retrieving her razors
- If players fail the Sneak test they get a Troublemaker reputation effect and guards steal their camera
Spy Interrogation:
- Horama is now Kaelin's rival
- Changes to Horama's age and features
- New location: Horama's Hall
- Police encounters have a higher chance
- When working for Kaelin, Horama will send guards to capture the player for an interrogation
- Entering Horama's hall will also trigger the scenes
- Four new interrogation punishment scenes
- Harder scenes if the 'Heavy Punishments' toggle is active
- Players can moan lustfully during the interrogation (seduction check) to turn it into a sex scene without giving Horama answers
- New BDSM sex scenes: masturbation (penis/pussy variants), vaginal, anal (strap-on variants), vaginal/anal trains (strap-on variants)
- Sharing information with Horama has a chance of ending the interrogation
- Sharing misinformation has a chance to end the interrogation but also to prolong it
- If players stay quiet they will continue to be punished for hours until freed by Kaelin
- Begging increases Horama's trust but also submission
- On release, Kaelin will either promote the players (Trust check) or abandon them
- Once players are promoted to Detective, they're no longer bothered by Horama or the Police and they get 40 e-coin weekly
- If players manage to finish the interrogation without giving Horama any actual information, they get a reputation buff with the Administration and a trust increase with Kaelin
Digging Works Update:
- When starting as a slave, Kaelin now has new dialogue sequences at Trust 30 and Trust 65, foreshadowing her eventual offer to recruit the player for more specialized work
- Small additions to Excavations slave start and playthrough (adjectives, visual accessories)
- Submission and fetishes now increase faster when working in the Digging Works
- The submission threshold for Kaelin's branding and collar scenes is now 50 and 70
- Kaelin's collar now has a different color than other slave collars
- Finished the quest to infiltrate the Thulle Deviants given by Kaelin
- While doing quests for Kaelin, players can now avoid punishment if they didn't get enough done while working with artifacts
- If players are enslaved after working for Kaelin, she will direct specific taunts at them
- At trust > 90, Kaelin offers the player to join the Administration as a spy and become a free citizen with an ID wallet as long as they work for her
- Synapse Corp and Isara Inc infiltration quests also become available from the slave start once players are working for Kaelin
- If being sent back to slavery after working for Kaelin, players won't be upgraded to the curator's house or offered quests
- Other Stuff:
- When Loading Data from older games, only relevant NPC data is copied
- Re-added Slavery (others) fetish
- When approaching Thulle Deviant's Vangard, players with status > 30 no longer in an Out of place reputation penalty
- Sirani and Kanna no longer take a two hour break leaving their shop unattended
- Hermaphrodite replaced by bigenital
- Expanded Vivian's first email to include additional context
- Optimized button options with only one access to the DOM, reducing lag
- Optimized variable processing in texts to reduce lag
- It's now possible to trade silver and e-coins in the Bargain Corner. The rate is based on the Barter skill.
- Players can now only request access to Synapse or Isara databases if they know the NPC's job
- Players can no longer service Vivian at 100 exhaustion
- Dru and Yah now also wear an interface helmet when sent to join Vivian
- Raul is now Rauline when female, Emilia is renamed Emilio when male, Kimberly to Kimber
- The Hazy haven now sells ISAPHAR-LustUp again
- Performing sex acts on Vivian now takes 30 minutes and is more tiring
- Blindfolds and handcuffs now impact the Precision work and Manual labor skills
- Anxiety now impacts vigor, Exhaustion impacts production
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed paperdoll bug in modest breasted characters wearing see-through clothes
- Fixed a big where Davita wouldn't give masculinization cocktails to himbo characters
- Fixed a bug that prevented authorized slaves from leaving the Digging Works
- Fixed a bug in Kaelin's branding scene that made many body parts unavailable
- Fixed Raul's text when networking at Olena's manor
- Fixed a bug where placing Vivian's or Caspian's chips in restrained NPCs would break the dungeon
- Fixed a bug that didn't let payers keep more than one Vivian chip in their inventory
- Fixed a bug where sneaking out of the red gate would mark the player as an escaped slave even if they weren't one to begin with
NPC inventory:
- NPC game data (charactersObject) now contains the current list of accessories worn by each NPC.
- The list of accessories is updated when the NPC's gender is changed.
- NPC game data now has separate information about the current and default outfit.
- NPCs will revert to their default outfit after encounters.
- The default outfit object is now updated along with the current outfit when an NPC's gender is changed.
- Some NPCs now wear accessories by default: Vivian, Rafail, Olena, and all slaves now wear slave collars.
- NPC portraits now show head, eyes, mouth, and neck accessories.
- The NPC paper doll shows body accessories in addition to those shown in the portraits.
- Dominance actions are now in a separate block from the "Ask something of him/her" chat options.
- New dominance actions during sex: gag, ungag, blindfold, remove blindfold.
- The NPC portrait now represents bondage items given to NPCs during sex, such as gags, blindfolds, cat/dog food, cat/dog collars.
- The NPC paper doll now represents bondage items such as handcuffs and crawlers.
- Updated NPC bondage flags to check the new accessory object instead of the previous custom flags.
- Accessories placed on captured NPCs will remain between encounters.
- At 90% dominance, players can access the NPC clothing menu and freely and permanently change the NPC's default outfit.
- Upon gaining access to the NPC's outfit, players can place them in chastity.
- Penile actions blocked for NPCs in chastity cages.
- Blocked vaginal actions for NPCs wearing chastity belts.
- 6 East Street Manor scenes have been edited to update the NPC accessory object.
- NPCs no longer wear bras when they become male.
Character customization:
- It is now possible to fully customize NPC traits at the start of the game.
- The character creation screen now displays the character's paper doll.
- New character creation "nipple color" options: pink, terracotta, dark.
- Older saves will automatically assign nipple color based on skin color.
- Players can now load and save character creation data at any step of the character creation menus, and reuse character designs, fetishes, attributes, NPC settings, and configuration toggles.
- Players can now move back and forth between character creation menu screens without losing their work.
- Paperdoll now changes dimensions with height.
- Paperdoll now changes dimensions with body type.
- Male paperdolls have style changes based on body type.
- Changes to male paperdolls.
- Updated male clothing and bondage items to new male torsos.
- The player's face type no longer automatically changes when crossing the masc/fem threshold.
- Paperdoll now shows all penis sizes (previously only two).
- Paperdoll now shows pubic hair.
- Paperdoll now shows all breast sizes (before only two).
- Adapted the female clothing display for the different breast sizes.
- Male paperdolls now never show breasts.
- Skinny males will no longer be assigned the female paperdoll regardless of their masculinity.
- Players can no longer select the Cock Worship (Receive) fetish if they don't have a penis.
- Players can no longer select "Forced Orientation (Other)" as a starting fetish, since NPCs don't have a limited sexual orientation.
- Players who start in a non-standard/sandbox starts will no longer have the starting clothes in their inventory.
- Men's shirts, polos, and sneakers now have different styles.
- Adanna, Elekra, and other NPCs now completely change their outfits when they change gender.
- Changing an NPC's gender back to their original gender will restore their original traits instead of assigning them the default traits.
- Adjusted neck sizes. Necks are now the same size for portraits and paper dolls to avoid mismatching neck accessories.
- Minor changes to flat and wavy hairstyles.
- New 'sandy copper' hair color.
- Ring gags now have their own design.
Rough Gangbangs and Residence Guards:
- It's now possible to use the intercom in North Street and Main Street apartments.
- If players are staying with an NPC who lives on North Street or Main Street, they can now use the intercom to get in.
- Players may attempt to fight or sneak past security to enter the residences.
- Players can try to seduce guards to get in more easily.
- New rough gangbang scenes when seducing guards on North and Main Streets: anal train, bondage facefuck, triple penetration, humiliation, sexual exhaustion, strap-on variations, orgasm scenes.
- After a scene, players can try to sneak into the apartments, with an easier skill check than from outside.
- Getting spotted trying to sneak in will result in players being left naked and in bondage.
- After each scene, the guards will get tired and try to get the player out, which can be prevented with an additional seduction check.
- Successfully seducing them will lead to another gangbang scene.
- If the player manages to exhaust all of the guards without collapsing from exhaustion, the player will be able to sneak into dwellings without having to make another skill check.
- North and Main Street apartments now have more loot.
- More apartments added to North and Main Streets.
- Davita now lives at 1 North St. - Apt. 10 and Elijah at Apt. 9.
Other Stuff:
- Autosaves are now also stored in indexDB to avoid cache limits.
- Changed Vivian's outfit, Sorona features.
- New items: red and black spandex long gloves and tights, interface helmet.
- Quinn is no longer renamed to Quinna when set to male then female.
- Changed Enara's traits to make her appear when entering Thulle.
- Construction work on North Street now pays one silver for an easy lifting skill check and five silvers for a more difficult one.
- Shop buy and sell prices moved to the left so they're next to the item's name.
- Restored the "Unworn items" list when checking inventory, the rest of the items are now shown in the "Other items" list.
- Optimized conditional checks to avoid delays between steps.
Bug Fixes:
- Balance menu now still shows income from jobs the player left/was fired from during the current week.
- Fixed a bug that was hiding many items from the inventory "other items" list.
- Fixed the chance of success displayed when capturing NPCs.
- The game no longer marks the location as the NPC's home when they're captured.
- Captured NPCs no longer have their stats reset when approached.
- Fixed purchased but unworn items disappearing from inventory.
- Fixed bugs affecting Morgan and Adanna's pet farm elbow and knee items.
- Fixed female harness design so it doesn't interfere if the character has a large penis.
- Fixed a bug that caused spanking, electric play, and whipping dominance actions to fail more often than the success chance indicated.
- Fixed a bug where some character traits weren't updated when the NPC sex ratio was reset at game creation.
- Fixed problems with black boots.
- Fixed some NPCs showing places in their schedule as undefined.
- Fixed complex skill checks to still show the actual value even if "Hide Skill Check Chance" or "Vague Skill Check Chance" is toggled.
- Fixed a bug that made the first week of 2 East Passage - Apt 2 free.
- Fixed inactive quest notifications.
- Fixed "Wait for fight" button when starting fights early in the arena.
- Fixed missing ending for Sagara's Protein Supply quest.
- Stealing no longer angers NPCs when no one is around.
I absolutely love this, and it's hugely addictive, with a great variety of ways to explore the story and mechanics, and different approaches to take to playing the game.
This is a unique game with some very cool ideas and mechanics, but also some serious balancing problems that I hope will be addressed one day.
The only games that come close in depth are DoL (more on this at the end of the review) and TrapQuest. Yes, Secretary has much, much more story and variety of smutty scenarios and quests, but Secretary does not have the sandbox or near-invisible integration of story with game mechanics - it's not a comparable game from either direction.
I really like the seamless integration of story and emergent gameplay. GTA could learn some lessons from how well the core design of the game is executed.
The aim is to move around a "sandbox" city, interact with the NPCs, build up your skills, earn money, complete quests, and discover the deeper mysteries of the setting.
With each NPC there are stat-based interactions, including a well-thought out conversation system where social skill, reputation, and basic human tact and insight help you befriend allies, locate victims, or identify predators, depending on the situation.
There's a good variety of different people to interact with, and you can choose your own ways of doing it: seduce them, pick their pockets, help them solve their problems, buy their services, or simply punch them in the face, and there are more options than that. The quests, and your exploration of the city unlock information about the setting and help unravel the mystery of your character's unusual situation. This quest/story content is most impressive in how it fits with the mechanics, but it is interesting and creates stakes that can make things very tense and exciting at times.
This is a genuine game, not just a story, but it's not simply mechanical and repeitive either - as some people and places have quests that involve overcoming both social and world-based obstacles.
Howevever, it's not without some flaws... substantial flaws.
Artwork is mostly lacking. There are some small vector graphic portraits of NPC faces, and a paperdoll (which is quite new), plus a map. There are no full-length images of NPCs, and this is a pity, as the text descriptions of them are often very brief and the characters can be hard to visualize. The recent addition of the image for the MC is a great improvement, but even this is not quite complete yet - it doesn't show bondage or body-mod items visually, though the MC face image does show some info.
The main window layout has some annoyances and you can't have the lower part big enough to properly read the info and see the images without making the main window enormously wide - I think this would be easy to fix. Also, the window that shows stat changes is too small as the number of stats that can change in a single event are crazy and sometimes overwhelming.
The top menu bar layout and icons should be split up into groups for easier access.
The names of some of the kinks, and many of the stat changes are unintuitive and have a harsh learning curve.
The many, many, stat changes, in particular, are hard to follow, and currently no way to see the underlying stats for a lot of things, only the changes - the button for details on each NPC in the relationship summary does not work.
There are sequences of gameplay that are incredibly repetitious and grindy. If you start as a slave, for example, you will likey be stuck in a loop for a long time, completely controlled by bondage, with very limited options and no clear path to escape - and the actual path to escape is to mind-numblingly grind your stats up until you can escape/evade/fight successfully, etc.
There's an attempt at creating a helpful map of the city to navigate, but this is a lot less usable than one might hope and could do with some polishing. It can be hard to relate the "directions" you can go from a location to the map. This takes time to adjust to, and you learn to cope with it - eventually learning the city layout very intimately - but it takes time and is a steep learning curve for new players.
The other, more diffuse issue, is that the stats and stat-changes are not well balanced. I understand this is hard, as there are a lot of stats. A lot!
However, the game is very stats oriented, and I often find the way the stat interactions are designed can be more "simulation" and less "fun", with mechanics that are both unimmersive and also damaging to enjoyment, instead of doing what they should, which is making things more fun.
For example, and this is just one example, there are many other issues, pain and arousal reduce your escape skill linearly. Your escape skill is capped at 100 and can go no higher. This means that increasing your escape skill to the max doesn't increase your actual escape chance in a huge number of situations. Any time you are being hit by a fetish, or in pain, your escape skill drops to a minimum of 1% and is 1% regardless of whether you have almost no Escape skill, or it's maxed out to 100. This makes the skill itself all but meaningless in far too many situations where you really want to use it. It's the same with many other skills.
I'd suggest that modifiers should apply on a curve, scaled across a range, or some similar mechanic, so pain and arousal still reduce your escape chance, but don't tank it to -100 that's then floored up to 1%. Instead, it should scale down smoothly, so a character with 100 Escape but max pain and arousal should still have a something like a 3% to 5% chance to escape rather than 1.
In short, it shouldn't matter how much pain and arousal you have, 100 Escape skill should always give more escape chance than 10 Escape skill, even if it's not much more.
As it is, higher skills mainly impact easy situations, where it suddenly tips things dramatically in your favor. It should probably be the opposite - higher skill should make most difference in difficult situations.
The impact of these skill formula designs is even more obvious in combat, where small modifiers can tip a very easy win into a near certain loss.
It also feels that the skill cap is easily reached, and also too low. I think you should be able to take skills over 100, just way more slowly.
If the current increase rates were all kept, a skill cap of 200 would be reasonable, and would offset some of the problems with the current modifier formula too.
Another stat niggle is how reputations work. This is initially hard to unravel and read the stats for, and suffers from the same linearity issues as the stats ... but gets applied to all social interactions in that same linear way, which is highly unimmersive.
For example, if you're talking to another prostitute you shouldn't suffer social penalties for being a prostitute!
Some scenarios can easily lead to you racking up > 100 prostitution events and this tanks your social with so many people so fast that it basically removes your social options from the game entirely. This is not in any way fun or interesting, it just feels silly. Prostitution shouldn't impact reputation at all IMHO, it should only impact personal one-on-one interactions - only people who had sex with you as a prostitute should care about that. Also, there should be more impact from clothing style, with way more access to slutty clothes etc. that might be a job requirement, and that could impact your social... but even then, it shouldn't always be negative, it should depend on the type of interaction. Lack of nuance in the reputation system and how it's used is frustrating, unimmersive, and highly exploitable once you get your head around how it will play out.
Another niggle, which I noted when the game first released, is that the "Change Position" option in sex is exploitable and can easily be used to consistently grind NPCs into exhaustion so they fall asleep on you.
A small bug in sex is that you can have your arms bound behind your back, but can still use the all fours sex position - this doesn't do much harm but is a bit silly.
DG clearly owes some inspirational ideas to Degrees of Lewdity and a shorthand description of the experience would be a dystopian cyberpunk version of DoL.
To digress, DoL is a game that hamstrung itself by adopting a "school" framework and using artwork that - while claiming to represent an 18+ aged character - looks creepily youthful.
The creepy feel that DoL has could easily have been avoided, so we must conclude that DoL's approach was a conscious choice - a very poor one - and is a serious turn off for playing the game.
DG avoids any of the DoL age-related creepiness, but it does retain the incredibly brutal violent, and inherently rapey nature of DoL's world. This definitely lands poorly with some players. Also some players are turned off before they can give the game enough time to understand that the DG world does a lot more to support believability of such a harsh environment. Nevertheless, there is perhaps such an excess of sex and bondage in DG that any scenario that doesn't involve sex or bondage can sometimes seem like a breath of fresh air in relief.
I think that DG would likely benefit from toning down the baseline bondage and violence a little so that it feels more impactful when it does show up. It could be a little easier to live a less extreme life if you want to; I don't think that would hurt the game.
For a game that has a strong focus on bondage and slavery, DG has a suprisingly minimalist implementation of bondage and body-mod mechanics. I really hope the creator will do more in this area of the game as time goes by.
DG is not for everyone, but if you have a high tolerance for dark themes and violence, then it's really a standout and well worth investing a lot of time and effort in exploring. Unlike (say) Accidental Woman, it delivers on its promises, in fact, over-delivers. There is a lot to discover here, and it takes effort to get to the story content, but it feels worth it.
It's well-written, interesting, and ridiculously expansive for how early in development it is. It's much darker than most of the stuff on this site, but if you're into this kind of thing, definitely give it a go!
This game surprised the heck out of me and I wanted to write an honest opinion on it. Something I've not done in a few years as there was a lot of the same stuff flloating about. Suddenly came this game, on the surface some of the same tropes but well written. However, the depth of gameplay - if you look for it, made me double take. Seriously, knock a door, as it's an option, and next I know I'm someone's ponygirl? I was so delighted I had to put it out here. This game has several such semi hidden story lines and it's nowhere near done. I wanted to praise the sort of non-linear way this was done. Give it a go, even someone more surface oriented won't be disappointed.
The best thing about the game is probably the writing. The author "gets" what makes dom/sub interactions hot in a way that not many do. There is plenty of extremely good content revolving around the player's humiliation and corruption in an unbelievably harsh world. Even better, despite being early days a lot of it feels somewhat "organic" from the conditions the game sets up. The game world feels well thought out and has quite a lot of depth in some areas and throws plenty of surprises to keep the player engaged.
Overall I really enjoyed this game and would definitely recommend it.
There is also some room for improvement though. For example- even though the game is set in a harsh world, sometimes the character interactions are a bit "much", even for the setting. For instance, over about three gym sessions Holger moves from insults to skullfucking. It just moves way too fast. Ditto for the cafe and maid storylines- phenomenal writing but the characters have a distinct lack of chill that kind of breaks the immersion. Also in personal interactions, even your flatmates will jump straight from asking your name to full on sexual assault. (The insult mechanic is amazing, by the way- though it rarely seems to trigger). The scenes themselves are great and I know the author is probably still working on the pacing but generally I wish there was a bit of a slower burn. It would also be good if there were a cue to let you know that you'd come to the end of content in an area.
Currently there isn't really any feminisation content in the game. Transformations are implied but AFAIK cannot happen to the player (though there is the groundwork for them to be implemented soon). Personally I didn't really notice the lack of images- the descriptions are good enough.
I played this a bit, it has a decent amount of content, but a few things stand out: it can be quite repetitive, it could use at least some graphics in addition to the text, and lastly (and most diappointingly, from my perspective) the 'feminization' content in the game involves very little actual feminization, and doesn't seem to understand the fetish at all.
