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Life with Mary is an adventure virtual novel. While not chocked full of choices, most choices do have an impact on the story.

Your college friend's daughter is going to school in the city and since you live there he would like to know if she can stay with you. Your friend will come to check up on her on weekends, and see his mistress, to see if she wants to come home, or stay with you.

Your choices will affect how Mary, and other women in the game, react and respond to you. Since the game is centered on Mary if she leaves the game is over. I highly recommend saving your game when you have a choice to make. The choices are normally not very frequent and you will have some idea of the outcome, based upon your choice.

There is no gallery, all action must be experienced in game. However, with 54 save game slots you can save all of your favorites.

I recommend this game. The story is good, if a bit slow moving in spots. This isn't a sexual romp, it is more real life.

Intel i7-8086K Coffee Lake 6-Core 4.00GHz CPU
Crucial Ballistix Sport AT 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (16GB x 2)
ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Overclocked 8G GDDR6

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Despite a few minor technical problems, Life with Mary is a good romantic slice of life sexual adult game. If you are attracted to Mary by her appearance then this game can be a feel good virtual girlfriend sensation. Main topic of the game is age difference from a perspective of two people who falling love each other and up to the player to experience it.

Another adult visual novel with 3D-rendered graphical presentation and branching story plots.

Visuals are good, altough very similar to other games of this type. Presentation is mainly static.

Gameplay is basically in watching (clicking trough the scenes) or skipping (holding the ctrl-button) the narrated story with some interruptions for making choices (per click on preset answers).

Altogether ok and basically entertaining, although without significant differences to other games of this genre. The price is acceptable.

Life With Mary won’t be for everyone but if you have patience there is a great game here. It is a very slow burn and takes a couple hours before things start to pick up. For those who enjoy adult visual novels this may be too long to wait for a pay off but for me it was worth it. Not only were the lewd scenes good when they got there but the story was actually really well done both before and after that. It did a great job setting up a pretty mature take on a relationship and quite frankly what I would call the most wholesome relationship I have seen in the genre. Maybe it’s that I could relate to the main character more than in many other games that helped. He is a shy guy; works with numbers; and lives in a “sterile” place which checks a lot of my boxes not too long ago. Combine that with how Mary was a well rounded character who isn’t perfect but who is one of the most redeemable characters I have seen and you have a pair you can root for. The side characters were well done as well. I liked John; Andy; and especially Simone. I do think some more detail could have been added to the epilogue in a form of years down the road although maybe a sequel can tie up those ends. I would also say that certain characters got surprisingly little time such as Mike and Lady Tatiana. Mike just kind of disappears despite him being Mary’s father and Lady Tatiana had an interesting introduction and then was never seen again. The art was very good in much of the game. The models and objects both had good detail. There are surprisingly little in the way of animations early on although they do start to appear about the midway point of the game and when they do are decent although not the best I have seen. One little minor nitpick I have is the food. It seems like 95% of the time they eat the same pasta or ramen over and over. Not a big deal but I feel for the main character. There is no sound in the game and given the fact that it has been out for almost two years at this point I doubt that they will be added in despite the store page still promising this. I don’t mind the lack of effects but having no music just seems odd at times as most visual novels have some form of music and it can make a scene better. I also don’t understand why question marks were added to random parts of the text. Maybe it was supposed to make the game stand out or unique but it just seemed odd and out of place.

I played Life With Mary on Linux. It never crashed. I did notice one animation scene had some flickering but the rest were fine. I also noticed two spelling errors. You can save whenever you want and there are fifty four save slots. Alt-Tab didn’t work.

Game Engine: Ren’Py 7.3.2.320
Graphics API: OpenGL
Game Version Played: 1.02
Disk Space Used: 1.93 GB

GPU Usage: 0-10 %
VRAM Usage: 667-956 MB
CPU Usage: 1-4 %
RAM Usage: 2.8-3.5 GB

All of my criticisms of Life With Mary are pretty minor and they don’t detract from it being a fantastic game. The story and characters are top notch and if you can give the game patience the lewd scenes are pretty good as well. It certainly offered me something different than most adult visual novels out there. I finished the game in four hours and forty two minutes and paid $7.56 CAD for it so the value was very good.

My Score: 9/10

My System:

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 22.0.1 | Garuda Soaring White-tailed-eagle | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.17.1-zen1-1-zen

nice game with multiple endings. took quite a bit of time to find the right combination of choices to get another specific ending. the opening page that shows a warning has so many syntax and grammar issues that i felt reluctant to start the game, but looking back, i am glad i did play the game. the game is not written in a similar fashion as the warning page and hardly shows any syntax errors.

A more story driven VN than most on here. Reminded me a lot of Melody. The story is a bit of a slow burn, but it sucks you in, if you're not here for the sexy stuff.

I'm glad to see VNs like this one as most here usually concentrate on college life. While it's fun to relive the old horndog college days, for the older players it's easier to connect to a main character like this. Having dated a younger girl in my mid twenties, I found this very relatable and for Mary to be charming.

Only two hours in and I'm hooked. Maybe it's because I have a lot in common with the MC (except the money and looks), but this VN has been a treat so far.

Probably liked it more than it deserves. No sound, no music, model rendering is decent (though some of the shading was lame), what little animation there was is cheap, feels like much of the story was written by someone in a hurry, and gets kind of meandering at times...but still...it's the first AVN that had me emotionally vesting in and routing for a couple, and in doing so, not wanting to fool around to mess anything up for them. The character of Mary is so endearing that I didn't want to spoil anything for her. It's a cute story and held my interest throughout. Ending was kind of "What do we do now to end this?", but "life with Mary" ended up being something I cheered for...and it paid off, both erotically and emotionally. So if you're patient, like a sweet story with a very adorable love interest, and don't expect much from a formulaic happy ending, it's definitely worth the time.

Disclaimer: I buy/play Adult Virtual Novels for the hopes of good stories/plots. The sex/lewd parts of the game are just nice bonuses if they are done right.

Not really a review. Just general thoughts:

Spelling & grammar errors exist ( a peeve of mine), as evident right at the launch of the 'game' on the "Warning" screen, "DEPCTED" & "PORTRAIED". But I wouldn't say these errors are immersion-breaking because this 'game' isn't really immersive to begin with. Overall, the errors are actually far and few between and less than some of the other VNs I have played. If there is a lot occurring I normally quit the game and never continue unless an update is provided.

No "Scene" or "Gallery" options to discover/unlock.

Simplistic player choices and no indication whether the right choice has been made. Points system not apparent, just a 'game over' at various spots if unsuccessful. There will be some replayability if you're that interested in which choices work or don't pan out (but I don't see the point for replay considering no achievements exist).

Most importantly, since there are no Steam Achievements, there's no gauge of how successful I could be IRL romancing my adopted pseudo-niece.

Graphics are okay but there's some extremely dark scenes that obscure the important details. Very little animation as well.

"Story" uninteresting and odd writing/phrasing style.

MC has the emotions and personality of a wet blanket. Mary is 'meh'.

I'd get tired of pasta with peas or ramen served to me all the time.

Like certain movies or books, some VNs arouse me, most don't. This one didn't.

Short 'game' but it's cheap, especially on sale.

Thumbs up because I don't believe there's bad games, just bad pricepoints. LWM is still worth the price of a cup of coffee. I also want to encourage Adult VN creators to keep making these and improve on them.

good game a lot of story some of the lighting is a bit dull, a mix of acting lessons and tiny bit of sisterly lust