Hobby-demon Cortyn has a new favorite game with succubi. They are exploited there and then executed.
“Hey Cortyn, I found another game for you!”
“You know how big my Pile of Shame is already.”
“It has succubi, it’s dramatic and quite dark.”
“Bought.”
Yes, sometimes I get someone’s attention quickly and my friends slowly know what bait to use to hook me. After all, my last experience with a succubus game was the most disturbing gaming experience I ever had.
But since the trailer for “My Lovely Wife” caught my attention immediately, I gave the game a chance.
Let me put it this way: It was quite a wild ride. Double meaning intended.
But let’s start at the very beginning and begin with the trigger warning that applies to the game:
A Dead Woman and the Use of Carnal Essence
“My Lovely Wife” starts off quite calm and simple. You play as Jake, who has been hired as a private tutor for a young lady named Luna and will guide her life from now on. He accompanies her to various courses, takes care of her etiquette and social obligations. Over the years, the two fall in love and ultimately decide to marry.
But since that would be far too simple, Luna is killed one day. The exact circumstances of her death are not explained, but Jake is thrown into a pit. Luna was the great love of his life, and without her, he simply cannot envision a future.
In the midst of his grief, Jake is then visited by a well-dressed man who reveals to him that he is working on a solution to his problem: resurrection. He himself has a very similar goal and needs Jake’s help for that.
To enable Luna’s resurrection, Jake must collect large amounts of “Carnal Essence” – in German a bit more directly “Lustessenz”. It is found in every human, but unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to extract.
But the stranger has a solution for that as well: We simply have to summon a succubus who will go harvest the lust essence for us. And, as forward-thinking as the guy is, he naturally brought us some materials for demon summoning.
Jake struggles a bit with himself but ultimately decides to do it. After all, he wants to be reunited with his Luna. Demons are creepy, and exploiting them feels wrong – but don’t succubi gather lust essence all day? So, they are doing what they would do anyway.
Succubus Manager or “Women Exploitation: The Game”
This begins the typical gameplay loop. A new day begins and I have to decide how to use my summoned succubus.
- I can, as you might have guessed, simply send her to the brothel to work there. She collects lust essence while earning a few gold coins for me at the same time.
- Alternatively, I can send her to the hotel to perform at “special shows” and impress with other skills. She collects significantly less lust essence, but much more gold.
- If she has collected enough lust essence, I can also send her to the mysterious guy who extracts the essence from her and thus advances the research.
If I’m not satisfied with my succubus’s performance, I can also improve her skills and have several options for that:
- In the “Charm School,” I can teach my demon more etiquette and thus increase her charm value. The value determines how good she is in various performances and thus how much gold she earns in the brothel or hotel.
- Alternatively, I send the succubus to the “Academy Noire” for very special courses that increase her flair value. Flair determines how much lust essence the succubus can accumulate in different activities.
With the gold earned, I can expand Jake’s apartment so he can accommodate more succubi at once – or I can buy expensive summoning materials to summon other succubi species with better stats.
It doesn’t take long before I’m managing the day of 5 succubi at the same time, assigning different tasks to each. While I let Ida and Marie collect lust essence in the brothel, I send Louise to the hotel to rake in gold for me. I send Mollie and Maude to different schools to raise their charm and flair values so they can soon be of assistance to the others.
Succubi as Dating Material
Up to this point, My Lovely Wife is “just” a somewhat twisted simulator game where I manage my “hero team” in the form of various succubi and plan their daily routines. Sometimes there are little pop-ups and events, like a special incident at the hotel or one of my demons gets a new perk – both positive and negative.
But now a touch of dating sim is added as well. As is typical for visual novels, I can also have conversations with the succubi and visit them at home in their rooms. I ask them about their day, listen to their stories, or let them insult me because that’s just their thing. After all, they want to get back home quickly to their beloved master, the king of demons.
Every day, there’s a little more story, one or two more dialogues – and then a barrier.
Suddenly, Jake finds himself at a loss for words. He can no longer respond to what the demons say, and the response options are grayed out.
Of course, that’s when the mysterious guy shows up and asks me exactly that. “Mr. Jake, have you ever noticed how humans sometimes struggle to talk to demons and respond?” Yes, thanks. I’ve noticed.
But there is a solution for that too. I have to extract the lust essence accumulated in the succubus and use it for myself. And how do you do that? You guessed it right: You kill the demon with a ritual dagger thrust into the heart.
The collected essence then transfers to Jake and serves as experience points, which I can invest in talents. Talents not only provide more response options, but also increase the maximum lust essence of newly summoned succubi, their earnings in hotels and brothels, or the rate at which they learn new things in schools.
As if that weren’t dark enough, I am told even more. I can gain significantly more essence and even rare summoning materials from killing if I ensure in advance that the succubus loves me. If I even manage to get the succubus to want to stay by my side forever, the murder brings an additional bonus.
By now, “My Lovely Wife” has reached a point that raises truly disturbing questions. It has become a dark mix of Jake trying to win back the love of his life by any means and Jake exploiting succubi in the worst “pick-up artist” manner and then discarding them once they give in to him.
My views become darker and more efficient. I catch myself thinking:
“Today I will send Mollie to S&M training at the Academy Noire, then I will pump her full of lust essence in the brothel tomorrow before I shower her with gifts in the park the day after and then make love to her, to kill her and improve my talents.”
This, in turn, triggers a vicious cycle. The new talents also make Jake better at summoning, which means: Future succubi can reach much higher charm and flair values than the currently summoned demons. Just a moment ago, Mollie was stabbed to finally be able to talk to the adored Louise, and now Louise has suddenly become economically irrelevant overnight because she has such low stats that can’t keep up with the new demons – and it only takes three more days until she also has the dagger in her heart, and the cycle begins again.
A small anecdote on the side: When I wanted to take a screenshot of the killing, the game automatically saved immediately, and I killed my most beloved succubus, whom I wanted to keep until the end.
Dark Fun That You Shouldn’t Think About Too Much – But You Do
Honestly: One shouldn’t think too long about what one is actually doing. It would be easy to label the game as “Exploitation of Women: The Game” or to see it as the realized dream of all Incel forums.
But it is not that simple or at least not for me. Because as dark as the choices are, they are still hard for me. Every time I see the animation of Jake destroying another heart with his ritual dagger, it triggers discomfort in me. Every time the nameplate on the room of “Lyneth”, “Ida”, or “Bettevere” switches to “Empty”, it feels like I have lost something that I cannot recover.
And I like that. My Lovely Wife forces ugly decisions. It forces cruel efficiency and to see the succubi as tools and not as independent, sentient characters – while at the same time offering dialogues with them that impose exactly the opposite.
I love it. The game is not perfect, and a few more detailed drawings, animations, or variation in sound effects would have surely benefited the game and rounded out the experience a bit.
Additionally, I could only touch on a part of the possibilities here. There is also the option to truly love a demon – and to choose this succubus instead of Luna and thereby bring the game to an end. Or one ensures that a succubus is transformed into a human through true love to then take her body as a vessel for Luna’s soul and eliminate the demon. There are many options. And all of them are dark.
For about €15 on Steam, My Lovely Wife captivated me quite a bit and has provided me with many interesting hours full of dilemmas and gruesome decisions – and along the way, 20 representations of succubi with their little quirks and entertaining dialogues.
And now, please excuse me, Mollie still needs a box of chocolates before I stab her to finally talk to Louise again…
