The Complete S.EXE, Cara Ellison's Series About Games, Sex and Relationships

From 2014-2015, RPS's Senior Scottish Correspondent Cara Ellison wrote S.EXE, 29 columns about games about sex, games about love, games about the space in between those two things, games about sexuality, and games about schlongs. Unfortunately the series is on indefinite hiatus as Cara takes a break from writing about games after her spectacular but surely exhausting Embed With... project, but whether you missed it the first time, didn't catch all of them or are simply missing it already, you should absolutely revisit S.EXE yourself now. It's a by turns insightful and funny (and very often both) document of the wilder side of games, the darker side of games, the sillier side of games and a hugely important but often little-seen side of games. Here's the complete archive.

Please be aware that many of these are NSFW, depending on your workplace or whoever else is watching.

• Ute by Lea Schönfelder, a game about sleeping with every man you can get.
• Matches & Matrimony, a Jane Austen-themed dating sim.
• FATALE, Tale of Tales' reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 scandalous theatrical endeavour, Salomé.
• The naked beefcakes of Skyrim, with cameo appearances from Jeff Goldbum and our own Alec (just his face, don't worry).
• Sega's racing game Outrun 2006, and how it articulates a young man’s fear of emasculation in front of a woman.
• A celebration of teenage girls and their sexual agency being front and centre of the narrative, starring How Do You Do It? and Love Is Zero.
• Tale of Tales discuss their IGF-winning Luxuria Superbia, “a simple game of touch, pleasure and joy made for fingers."
• English Country Garden dev Stephen 'Increpare' Lavelle's Striptease, an increasingly disturbing game ostensibly about stripping.
• Merrit Kopas on Consensual Torture Simulator.
• Snowblind Aces, Indiana Jones-esque interactive fiction with a touch of Saturday afternoon matinee romance to it.
• A diary revisiting the deadly sexuality of Vampire - The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Part 1, Part 2.



• A game about Peter Molyneux's groin (but really it's about hugs and respecting personal space).
• Hentai, and sexuality in Japan.
• The Arboretum, "a delicate exploration of the feelings of two teenagers whose only dating advice came from hentai and anime, and their fumbling fights their own expectations of romance."
• Crushes, romance and sex in Dragon Age II.
• Fuck Everything is really gross, and really weird.
• Kissing in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
• Why Gone Home is a more explicit Top Gun.
• Flirty cyberpunk bartenders in VA-11 HALL-A.
• Cowboy Bebop, Gateway Shuffle and the need to be heard by friends and lovers.
• Asking some New York lesbians for their verdict on "All-Girl Sex Simulation" Girlvania.
• Creatures Such As We, an elegant, intricate, sci-fi meta-narrative about player emotional investment and romancing non-player characters.



• Gay dating sim Coming Out On Top.
• Romantic Encounters At The Dome, a 2D MS-DOS platformer that sees a naked man with a semi erect cock jump around collecting beer and pissing on doors to open them.
• Seven stories about love and videogames, as told by assorted game developers and journalist.
• Two games about two very different sorts of relationships. Also, Primal Scream.
• "Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen.” On the asexual love affair in Tim Schafer's Full Throttle.
• Interviewing male porn star James Deen about why games and pornography are so often compared, and whether entertainment can have educational value.

And, sadly enough, that's it for now. It's not quite the end of S.EXE, however: Cara has plans for the series, including a standalone compliation of everything to date. Many thanks for writing these, Cara. We hope you come back soon.