Consent is something I always have on my mind when writing the sex scenes in Desert of Ash. Every sexual encounter is preceded by a reasonable amount of warning and opportunity to decide, 'Actually, I don't want to have sex with this man.' At no point is sex mandatory to continue playing. This particularly matters in a game where the player is expected to step into the shoes of the main character, where the second person pronoun "you" is used. I do not want "you" to feel as if you have been forced into an unwanted sexual encounter.

That said, sex is an integral part of the game, and avoiding all sexual encounters would be completely counter to the game's ethos. I do not expect to get many players who don't want to see any sex scenes at all; the game's subtitle, "a Post-Apocalyptic Gay Sex Simulator," should more or less self-select for that. But it is worth noting that this is not a game where it is possible to, say, release an 'adult' version and a 'clean' version, as some visual novels do. There is no reasonable way to strip sexual content from the game altogether. So, while the player is never forced to have sex in order to continue, having sex or not is not a neutral decision without consequence. Obviously the sexual CGs cannot be unlocked without choosing to engage sexually, but there are also entire large plot threads that only open up after having sex with certain characters. For some characters, a quick fuck is just that, while for others, it is a meaningful event in their lives and greatly affects your relationship with them. By exploring these factors, I hope to create characters who feel real, for whom the player cannot make decisions about quite so frivolously.