Hey hey, today we are happy to finally announce a side project we've been working on alongside our main project for some time now.

Price for Freedom: Gold and Sand is a standalone side story taking place 2 years before Avarice, with Aya as a protagonist, freshly arrived in Kaldea and trying to establish herself as a hunter for the guild. The game will include brand new love scenes, its own story and other features.

Gold and Sand is developed in parallel with Avarice, uses the same code base and shares lots of assets to optimize the process, though it has some unique content you wont see in the main project. It will be finished and released before Avarice on Steam due to being of much smaller scale, but it still retains the same quality, if not a little bit better. It will help us gain some experience on how to properly publish a game.

Most assets are already finished and animated, while the writing is progressing nicely. We are taking care to minimize the impact on Avarice development, and since the code and assets are (mostly) shared, improvements to one project is reflected on the other.

We just now published Gold and Sand's Steam page, and it will help us a ton if you could add it to your wishlist there. Of course Gold and Sand will also be available on Itch.io!

Anyways, here is the synopsis:

Muster your courage as Aya, a green horn huntress who’s rejected life on the farm to strike it out for a new home, discoveries, and adventure!

But with each new journey comes the deadly unknown… vicious wildlife, marauders, monsters! Least not of all the exacting stare of Nailah, famous courtesan who’s name is known in distant foreign lands, and now your employer. Hunting, Aya has the tools and skills for, but her brash impulsive attitude could lead her to bite off more than she can chew.

From Team Dead Deer, enjoy Gold and Sand. An erotic CRPG set two years before Price For Freedom: Avarice and 85 years before our web comic series, with a robust character driven story.

As Aya, venturing to Kaldea to chase a dream of being a lauded huntress with the city’s famous hunter’s guild. But Kaldea is as much an opportunity as it is a trial, an independent city state, wild and untamed like the beasts Aya now chooses to hunt. As a loner, she may struggle to find her footing in this brutal world.

With Nailah, a woman walking a very different path, Aya finds herself forced under her employ and brought together by adversity. A master in the art of the social craft, the exotic jackal seems to effortlessly glide through life. Her trade of flesh has made her wealthy, respected, and noted across the globe. All fall for her charm, all save for Aya... struggling to come to terms with how differently the world reacts between the two...

Desperate, fighting for survival, and vulnerable. Aya musters every bit of strength she can to overcome a deadly situation. This story explores characters learning their limits and drawing from their strengths. Connect with others, learn to lean upon them! Or choose to isolate yourself and push others away. In this adventure your choices will shape how Aya reacts and is perceived by the world while you interact with our living breathing characters.

A world full of wondrous cultures and peoples with a depth rarely seen outside of the CRPGs of old! Team Dead Deer prides itself in meticulous world building. Explore the savannah and a handful of settlements along the Atlathkan coast and experience our living world.

A fully fleshed world with adventures, danger, friendships… and passion! As much as Aya explores her world and new life, she too, will explore the sensual aspects of life. Romance, flirtation, sex. Gold and Sand embraces every aspect of an adult venture drawing inspiration from some of the greatest stories of all time. Will you guide Aya to an impassioned one night fling, or a budding tender romance? Aya’s temper isn’t the only thing that runs hot. The huntress may struggle to connect with others, and this too, can drive her passions to burst forth in scintillating fully animated scenes.

Explore the savannah, towns, cities and caves of the Kaldean countryside while also exploring the characters among the world in various ways. We endeavoured to give you as much freedom in Gold and Sand as we possibly could. Weighty choices interacting with others and a brutal combat system! Skill trees and inventory management with a host of side content and minigames!

Our lovingly detailed and Hand Drawn environments with secrets and all manner of things to discover. Items, tomes, creatures, and settlements. Artwork featuring the renowned Arbuz Budesh with other amazing talents of our art team like Etherek and ZlaSova involved, this game and world will be a unique experience.

Aya and Nailah are not the only characters in the world. Seasoned hunters, a tribe of ogres, and even some cameos from Avarice. Some of the pasts from character’s in Avarice will be shown how they interconnect with those of Gold and Sand. But you will learn secrets of Aya and Nailah that are unique to this adventure that may put many things in context.

Fully animated scenes with our fully fleshed characters gives weight and impact to every encounter. Each connected to story events and our narrative, we deliver meaning and flavour to every scene. A feisty scalekin huntress, a dusky courtesan aeylish woman, there is no shortage of opportunity for erotica in our setting.

Experience our unique interpretation of turn based combat with three main characters, Aya first and foremost! A beast hunting generalist you can craft to fill the role you need. Nailah, though a courtesan, is ready to fill a supporting role in combat and may prove to have unexpected talents beyond the boudoir. Who could be our third? Play to find out!

We sought to explore what we were capable of delivering with this project. Many of these developments are experimentation for things to come to our mainline entry and to cut our teeth on smaller form content.

Gold and Sand is an ancillary project which can also serve a stand alone experience of its own right. Set two years before Avarice, a collection of characters from our main project will be expanded upon. Witness and experience their story of how they came to be the characters you’ve seen us flesh out over the years for yourself first hand in Gold and Sand!

Add the game to your Wishlist: STEAM