Maids & Masters Arrival (Demo Available!)

So. I maked dis.

DOWNLOAD (google docs)

And have a mirror, since I'm not sure how well google docs plays with downloads.

DOWNLOAD (mediafire)

Maids & Masters: Arrival serves as the prequel to a project I've been kicking around in my head for a while now. I found myself with a little extra free time and wanted to try something new, so I picked this out of my folder of half-baked plot threads and made a little RPG Maker loaf of bread out of it.

But this is more of a slice of bread. Knowing where everything is, I can run through and interact with everything that gives a unique interaction and complete the demo in about 40 minutes. If I do only what is required, it takes 15-20. But I'm proud of myself for finishing this and I want to share it. (and maybe it doesn't belong here because it's a finished product, but also it's only a demo that serves as the prequel to a decidedly larger project that I'll continue to work on? please have mercy, mods.)

As some fair warning, there are a few placeholder assets. I need to make some custom tiles, and I intend to make a whole slew of other custom assets to do things like give characters their unique appearances and allow them to emote a little more beyond the occasional emote bubble. That, along with things like trophies and secrets that don't break the 4th wall, are things I intend to include with the full game. So if you see/find any jank (like the super obvious staircase), that should be ironed out by the time I put out 0.1 of the actual game.

Though I have play tested the snot out of this thing. It takes less than an hour to beat, but based on my cumulative save slot times, I've got a little over 5 hours put in. Which doesn't include all the little things I spent launching the game to test, playing for a few minutes to confirm it works, and then closing out of the game. It might have a little jank because I wanted to keep the game as vanilla RPG Maker as possible (except for Fullscreen ++; you can push F5/F6 to change screen size) but otherwise nothing should break or be broken during play.

I haven't been terribly vocal or active here, even though I've been lurking for quite some time. I'm trying to break into creative fields, and I've made the decision to take the Kinoko Nasu strategy of "call somebody a servant and let the MC bone her defenseless anus and maybe it's a billion dollar franchise in 15 years" as my own port of call. If you pay a lot of attention to the threads that come through the Development section of the forum, you might've seen The Rising Son pop up every so often. I'm the writer for that there, as part of a three person team. Maids & Masters is something I'm doing completely solo, and intend to continue doing completely solo. I've greatly enjoyed doing the work, so I hope those of you who download Arrival get some enjoyment out of playing through it.

I suppose I should talk about what this actually is as a project, too.

I'm a huge fan of Sierra Lee, so I've taken quite a bit of inspiration from The Last Sovereign and Desecration of Wings. Though I don't intend to get quite as deep into the meta-theology of my setting, threads and allusions will be sprinkled throughout, and I do have my own private notes about the "truth" of things. I'm also hoping to include some economical aspects and get good use out of the switches and variables in RPG Maker. However, the scale will be much smaller. You aren't going to become Master of Arclent (disclaimer: M&M is not set on Arclent). You aren't going to have to attend a religious summit that blue-balls your horny succubi while you discuss the finer points of theological denominations. You're just out to avenge your parents, earn your way back to riches, and fix your house. Probably not even in that deliberate of an order.

I've also taken quite a bit of inspiration from other long running games, like Harem Collector and the likely considerably less popular Harem. While the goal of the Master here isn't to collect 101 Maids and buy up two thirds of all available real estate across five cities to house them all, the idea of organically encountering and recruiting girls (be they friend, foe, or in between) is going to be the main way additional characters join the party. Similarly, not all characters that join will be combatants; some will simply move in and provide a particular service. As well as other "services" upon request (because let's face it, we all know why we're here).

The last piece of relevant information is the original concept statement. "Like Black Butler, but horny." That's literally what I had in the document when the idea first popped into my head, and that's the way it stayed until about a week and a half ago. Servants (or for the gendered terms, Maids and Butlers) sign Pacts with their Masters to gain prowess in combat and the occasional magical power, which is referred to in-universe as Theurgy. Masters themselves, while they are the only ones who can enact these Pacts and Servants have no power without them, are functionally mundane people. There is of course societal hierarchy and all of that, but that's a different can of worms. For those unfamiliar, Black Butler is an anime where the main protagonist is a small boy who inherited his estate at a young age, and his butler (who is very definitely a demon one hell of a butler) created a magical pact with him to protect the young master. And also Jack the Ripper is a horny redhead with a chainsaw, so maybe I'm not that far off the mark anyway.

So TL;DR:

Maids & Masters: Arrival is the stand-alone prequel to Maids & Masters. It has some place holder assets, but is complete and bug free. What to expect? Imagine The Last Sovereign and Harem Collector went on vacation in the Black Butler universe for a year and popped out a child there which they promptly abandoned.

Enjoy, and stay cultured my friends.

PS, this thing is absolutely laden with secrets. Interacting with things more than once will get you different scenes, there are tons of things to interact with, there's a talking bush, the ending is packed full of variables to adjust for how much you do, etc. Unless all of you are EXTREMELY thorough, everyone should have a slightly different experience.