Corruption of Champions Review

A sick wizened Lizardman lies in bed breathing raggedly. He tells me his tale, a story similar to that of the other denizens of this strange land. It is one of hardship and sorrow—a desperate struggle against rampant demon invaders determined to enslave other races for their own sordid ends. A single solemn tear begins its inevitable descent down my, if you’ll excuse the artistic license here, perfect cheekbones, before I abashedly remind myself that this is an erotic text-based fantasy browser game. Corruption of Champions is sad, funny, sexy, ridiculous, and better written than arguably any game in the genre has a right to be.

Being the champion of a small village, the woefully underequipped hero ventures forth through a portal to a land occupied by demons and makes camp at a crossroads to explore the surroundings. Starting the game prompts a healthy dose of customization, including gender selection and skin color, but just about everything can be altered thanks to the transformative properties of consumable items. Drinking honey might give you the abdomen of a bee for example, or using a shark tooth may bestow the features of another creature (probably a walrus). The writing adapts to the player’s constantly changing appearance even in the lewd scenes. Especially in the lewd scenes.

The first hostile enemy is likely to be a low level imp, although unwinnable fights do pop up and at times the best option is to run away. Almost every creature wants to test the elasticity of the player’s orifices with or without their consent, so combat is a frequent occurrence. A physical strike and seductive poses make up the basic attacks. Later this expands (amongst other things, ouch) to magical spells and special abilities affected by various attributes. The actual combat itself is turn-based, just click on an action for that round and the game generates a result from both parties. A serviceable setup, if understandably detached. The last thing an erotic browser game should do is demand insanely complex strategic interaction from an audience with rapidly diminishing brainpower.

Not all creatures are hostile. There are plenty of talkative critters in Corruption of Champions, willing to chat, ply their services, or join the camp as companions. The quality of writing mentioned earlier is noticeable throughout, extending to dialogue choices and a morality system which measures pureness/naughtiness.

Exploration is as simple as clicking the explore button. That’s really all there is to it, unlike the developer’s other game in progress called Trials in Tainted Space which has a map. Dungeons are an exception because they have a fixed point and connected areas that can be navigated, but those are few and far between. Most play time is spent on area-appropriate random encounters, and while the randomness can keep a specific encounter needed to complete a side quest out of arm’s reach, new encounters pop up all the time to keep areas fresh and relevant.

There was one encounter in particular that galled me, a three part event leaving my character permanently unable to fight. My only attack was suggestive posing, and since the same event also came packaged with the exhibitionist fetish, my game was essentially unplayable. If there was a way out then I couldn’t find it. Ultimately that’s an issue easily avoided by a quick load in a game otherwise seamless in its execution. The oldest replayed events can still surprise you hours later with hidden options based on a myriad of variables like the main character’s body type and traits.

Corruption of Champions' most subjective quality is the effectiveness of its erotic aspects. The writer’s repetitive descriptions of certain body parts might possibly rub some people the wrong way. It costs nothing to find out since the game is absolutely free, perhaps because prolific avenues of smut distribution outside of HBO are hard to come by, or because the project owes so much to community collaboration.

Corruption of Champions was free and played to exhaustive lengths by Mark Richard on PC. The game can be obtained from the dev’s blog (NSFW) alongside their next collaborative community project Trials of Tainted Space, which has a Patreon page.

There are sixty-nine double entendres and innuendos in this article. Did you find them all?