In dark kingdom sim My Lovely Empress you run an empire with the help of summoned demon ladies
Faust never had a therapist
At some point every proud ruler must ask themselves the question: what should I do with all this stupid, tiresome civilisation I've built? Do I let it spin on forever, a gleaming machine of prosperity bathed in an eternal twilight, or do I, as the case may be, unleash a horde of voluptuous hellwomen to gather spirit energy for the resurrection of my tragically slain beloved? If you picked option B you should probably play My Lovely Empress, a plush empire management sim with a dastardly twist, from Indonesian team GameChanger Studio. Find a trailer below.
The gist: you are Emperor Hong of the Crimson Empire. You are a very sad banana, having recently lost both your mother, the previous ruler, and your dear Empress. The Crimson Empire itself is a picturesque quagmire of argumentative nobles, upstart peasants and uncollected taxes. Your viziers are grumbling and neighbouring rival monarchs are weighing their chances, but all you want to do is mope in your sanctum.
You don't appear to have access to any professional grief counsellors, not even a vampire with CBT training. You do, however, have the ability to summon Yaoguai, or demons of the north, all of whom take the form of sultry, sinister monster ladies with upgradeable stats and characteristics.
They'll help you with your imperial duties, like going on diplomatic missions or, er, terrorising the smallfolk with curses. You can also sacrifice them for unspecified boons, preferably after improving your relationship with them to increase the ectoplasmic yields. Ultimately, you must decide whether to permit them to harvest your citizens in a Mephistophelian bargain for the return of your lost wife.
In broad strokes, the game looks to be a mixture of dating sim, visual novel and King Of Dragon Pass-style plucking at sumptuous, painted regional maps, which periodically cough up branching snippets of story quest. It forms a trilogy of My Lovely games, the others being My Lovely Wife and My Lovely Daughter, each also the story of a grieving man conjuring thirsty diablettes to wreak horrors or be sacrificed. I guess crazy widowers are GameChanger's house style.
According to its Steam page, the game takes heavy inspiration from East and Southeast Asia mythology. It certainly looks a treat, with visuals that remind me a little of Darkest Dungeon and Hades. The spooky ghost ladies are all teen-rated, but this possibly isn't SFW: expect "Infrequent Violence, General Mature Content, and Sexual Content."
It's out on 21st August. Anybody here played any of the other My Lovelies? How Lovely are they, exactly, on a scale of "inoffensive" to "gorgeous"? I do relish a calculatedly unpleasant spin on the management genre, which tends to skew anodyne.