Chinese high school students create daring sex education game, earning positive reviews on Steam
- ‘Self-Reliance’ lets players make choices in interactive videos exploring sex issues
- Chinese classrooms are reluctant to talk about sex, despite growing risks of sexually transmitted diseases among youth
A group of Chinese teenagers have created a video game about sex education – a topic still taboo in mainland China – earning positive reviews on the US-based video game distribution platform Steam.
Self-Reliance is an interactive video game where players make decisions for the protagonists and lead the story in different directions. It was developed by seven high school students in Shanghai, who acted on camera to simulate various sex education issues in real life.
One chapter of the game features an underaged couple debating whether they should have unprotected sex. Another explores what you should do if someone is about to rape you.
The personal computer title was released last week on Steam as a free download. So far it has garnered more than 110 reviews on the platform, 85 per cent of which are “very positive.”
“The educational aspect of the game is implemented seamlessly into the gameplay itself,” wrote one Steam user, who identified himself as a 35-year-old software engineer.