VN - Ren'Py - Life in Middle East [v0.2.3] [LustfulFantasy]

I’ve been playing Life in Middle East for a while now, and honestly, it’s wild in the best way possible. I wasn’t sure what to expect, there aren’t many games set like this, but it hooked me right away. The setting alone makes it stand out from so many other visual novels. You step straight into Banu’s life, a woman juggling her family, her image, and her own buried desires, and the game just hands you the wheel. From the start, you decide if she stays loyal to her sweet husband, Kamil, or if she dives headfirst into her fantasies.

What makes it special is that Banu isn’t a blank slate. She’s layered, unpredictable, and oddly magnetic. On paper she’s religious and restrained, but the writing slips in these little moments of rebellion and craving that keep you guessing. Every choice feels meaningful, one minute she’s a devoted wife, the next she’s spiraling into temptation, and the eight full routes make those choices hit hard. Each path feels like its own story, so replaying never feels like retreading old ground.

The freedom is what kept me coming back. You can keep Banu “pure” and tender with Kamil, or you can push her toward corruption and see what’s out there. Both directions feel intentional and rewarding. The branching routes, “what if” moments, and blacked-out choices practically beg you to replay just to see what you missed.

It’s not just the writing, either, the presentation is great. The renders are gorgeous, Banu’s model is spot-on, and the environments look fantastic. The recent updates added music and sound effects that make the atmosphere even better. Animations are solid, everything runs smoothly at 1080p, and the little UI touches like top-screen status indicators make tracking your progress painless. The gallery and unlockable scenes are satisfying, and the dev clearly listens to feedback and keeps adding meaningful content.

Pacing-wise, it’s tight. Scenes move forward without dragging, but there’s always enough tension to keep you clicking “next.” This isn’t just spice for the sake of it, it’s got intrigue, drama, and real consequences to your choices. The routes are distinct enough that it feels like you’re playing a whole new game each time, which gives it insane replay value.

If you like character-driven VNs with meaningful choices, a unique setting, and stories that can go in wildly different directions, this one’s a must-play. Not perfect, but addictive, surprising, and full of moments that just click.

"An excellent game with a great variety of options that lead to different routes and endings, ensuring high replayability. The choices are close enough to keep the pacing dynamic, so it doesn’t feel like just an interactive movie. Each decision feels meaningful and adds to the sense of control over the narrative. Overall, it’s an immersive and well-crafted experience that encourages multiple playthroughs to uncover all the possibilities.

Fantastic AVN. This FMC is simply beautiful, with a slim toned body and a unique face that you can't figure out if she is a bad or a serious person, perfect for the role of a good or a terrible wife. It's similar to "Inside Jennifer" but Banu has a huge freedom, unlike Jennifer, she has the power to stop any shit or succumb to it in a consensual way. Good 3DCG and animations, and quite realistic bodies for all the characters. This FMC is straight (almost). There is only a handful quantity of lesbian content. Fine by me, there are already plenty of only lesbian FMC AVNs out there.

I am so confused about the positive reception this has gotten. My best guess is a lot of it has to do with the fact that this AVN covers a more niche type of woman, which is the "hijabi". The issue is, most of the people that cover this topic, generally do a pretty awful job. The games that focus on it specifically generally do the worst (what happens in general when you focus in on one niche fetish specifically), but most of the hijabi characters I've seen in others only have a small amount of content anyway (unfortunately), which I assume is why these AVNs where they're the focus end up being more popular.

After that extended intro, I'll try to be more concise: ultimately, the AVN in general is very bland. Visually it's dated and appears very matte, the characters are generic, the writing is very poor. I would almost hazard to say that the story is downright prejudicial, as the story seems to almost be a parody of what someone thinks a story in "the middle east" would be like, but I genuinely think it's just down to poor writing rather than anything downright racist (for that, look at basically any NTR AVN involving a black dude).

Ultimately, it'd almost be better to skip through it entirely. It'd save you time and you'd get the same out of the story as you would reading every page.

The protagonist is the cherry on the cake in this game. Banu has that protagonist aura that many players find fascinating. A female protagonist in this position caught my attention. What happens to her daughter and the consequences of this show that the players' decisions are respected in the game. The game brings a different cultural perspective. This alone is enough to show my support for the developer. 'Life in Middle East' addresses themes that other VNs don't. It's not a great VN because it can improve in quality, but the story told is what draws the most attention.

Review based on v2.1:

I don't get this game. It has a average but boring story, meh erotic scenes and decent CGI's. I'll give the dev cred for making the NPCs quite different to what you normally see in these games and love the idea about a middle eastern woman getting into sinful acts. Sadly so is everything if you look at it as a package quite average. Maybe somebody will find enjoyment in it but was not for me.

it's a good VN ngl but few things stick out if you have middle eastern knowledge or background like me in the story and execution
let's start first with the positives

- the corruption aspect is good
-renders/models are beautiful
-great sex scenes

to the negatives as I said before if u are not middle eastern you may not see this

women don't wear headscarf's with reveling clothes they can be tight yes but not reveling, it takes away from immersion
she doesn't mention religion much in the game in the Muslim world hijab=religious from seeing adultery as a sin to other aspects of normal life
that doesn't mean she can't be corrupted but at least she can see it in a ex-religious eyes and not an atheist western woman with a head scarf
what that tells me is either dev didn't do his homework or did it for creative reasons
I always encourage games that go outside the norms and not so many games here that feature middle eastern people that's why I gave it 4 stars

cool idea, unique mc. however, theres minimal content here, and the playtime is mostly spent with lines of text, with minimal sex involving the mc. came here for the non con stuff. you have a slight run in with the thugs, nothing after the fact. and then just a bunch of teasing, and sex scenes with everyone other than the mc. and the ones involving the mc is surrounded by having an affair. rather than allowing us to also play a faithful house wife, that happens to get targeted etc. meh doesnt warrant the non con tags amongst some others

Overall good game. Hot models, good scenes and decent enough storyline. Its a completely different setting than the normal stuff you see here, and that helps too. The corruption does happen fairly fast but it works good enough here.

For me, I kinda lost interest after a while. The reason is because there are simply too many characters to keep up to and two many plot-threads. I kinda got lost in who was who (a part from the main family characters) and the game seems to be all over the place with multiple threads to keep in mind at all times. Maybe they all get knotted together in the end but halfway through I was lost and didn't really like the story or the characters.

The graphic design and characters are well done however. Music / Sound effects are fitting and well over standard. Writing is average. The sex-scenes seems to be a bit short IMO and sometimes it feels like they just are there for filling up space in between the slow burn to make the player stay.

It's a unique story though and middle eastern themes is a great addition to the normal settings in most VN's. So that's a plus. Might be good for that kinda fetish if you have it.

An average game and might be worth a play-through. But it's a slow burn (which is not inherently bad per se) and you kinda feel you need a notebook to keep up.

Tags lie also about lesbian. I cannot see any lesbian scene or path there.

The PC in this VN also suddenly decides things that you don't want and have to follow no matter what. It's like you have one option and then the next year runs on autopilot.

A different kind of game. Not for everyone but excellent for those with a certain taste.

I love the main character. She is different from any other game I've played. I like the love interests, they are all so proper in public but hide their dark intentions. I like this game a lot.

Lemme start off with the things I like:

The character models are great. Very unique and sexy.

The storyline is well written. No real Engrish or obvious machine translation.

The setting. It's very unique for porn games with some great corruption potential.

The side storylines. Even though it's a slowburn corruption game, LiME still remembers that it's a porn game first and foremost, something a lot of well written games tend to forget. We are playing it to get off, and even though the main character takes a while to get to penetrative sex (which is the point I consider a porn game has just begun to be playable), there are scenes with side characters that have mini arcs that get to the sex faster.

The sex scene writing. Too many porn games with DAZ animations forget that half of a visual novel is the novel part. I like how the scenes have descriptions of what's going on, along with Banu's thoughts and feelings in addition to dialogue. It really helps with the sexiness, especially since the animations aren't always that great.

Now let's get into some of the issues I have that keep me from rating it above 3 stars, even though the dev has obviously put a lot of effort into the game

Banu needs to stop rubber banding on her feelings about sex. I get that this is a slow burn corruption game. I get that she has religious reasons for her attitudes towards sex. None of that is a problem. The problem is that, after she gets corrupted and starts willingly cheating, after the sex scene is over she goes right back to feeling guilty and talking about how her religion says she can't do this and promises to never do it again. This leads into several retreads of the exact same theme of Banu smugly saying she'll never sleep with a guy, the guy slowly getting her in a vulnerable state, the guy taking advantage, Banu resisting at the last second and leaving, Banu saying she'll never betray Kamil, Banu running into the guy again, Banu hanging out with the guy despite saying she would never talk to him again, Banu going back to his place while constantly saying nothing's going to happen between them, Banu either accepting his advances, getting drunk and having sex, or getting raped. This is pretty much every Banu related het sex scene. Even if you constantly choose to bad mouth Kamil and refuse to touch him, she still feels bad for cheating on him and her dead husband.

And speaking of her dead husband, Banu is supposed to be so devastated by the death of her one true love that even after more than a decade of marriage to another man she still hasn't had sex with him (!!!!!!), after the beginning oft h e game he only seems to get brought up when even the author realizes that Banu shouldn't be feeling guilty for cheating on Kamil. Not that I want more of a guilt complex, but it seems very sporadic and every time she starts feeling bad about cheating on the dead husband I want to groan.

There is way too much railroading for a game that supposedly has routes. Even if you choose all the slutty options, you'll still be railroaded into being a loyal wife to a man Banu doesn't love. Even if you treat Kamil like crap, you'll still end up on a romantic vacation with him where the only sex scenes that involve Banu are with Kamil, which increases his love counter, even though you've previously been picking every option to cheat that you have control over.

Even once you finally get to leave Kamil, you go right into another similar situation where Banu is living with her friend and her husband (one of the men Banu can choose to fuck), and even after saying that she's going to start living free she immediately agrees to obey her friend's husband like a meek little mouse because she doesn't want to be kicked out. So he basically replaces Kamil and the dead husband as the person Banu worries about betraying.

I get slow burn, I get corruption. But once the corruption starts and the burn starts to heat up, I don't want the main character to keep regressing. I want more sluttiness. More extreme sex acts. More destructive behavior. And right now this game doesn't deliver that, and I probably won't be checking back with the updates until at least a year has gone by. Maybe by then there will be more options to play as a corrupted slut instead of a character who always seems to revert back to the status quo.

Don’t understand what the last two twats who left a review are talking about.
The game is great and has multiple routes you can choose to take. The build up is good and the pacing is just right. I hate slow burns and this dev has found the sweet spot on when to introduce an intresting scene.
Keep working exactly the way you are right now mate and I hope you continue this Middle Eastern genre as at the moment it is very niche and this game tops everything in the sub category.
Keep it up and good luck!

bad renders, lots of typos ; needs a lot more polish at this point but even that won't correct the issue with the renders being terrible , other issues may get resolved in time

would recommend giving this a skip

This game is a multiple protagonist game. But this tag is missing. We have to make decisions for every character in the game. As a result, the game does not live up to its stated genre.

The characters are created beautifully and believably. Really liked the Arab. All the scenes are believable. But the game makes me want to be someone I'm not. Here I am forced to be myself - just a player.

The characters are well designed, and the animations were decent, the cheating and taboo elements of the game were the highlights for me. Overall, it has a very unique main character / setting and an engaging story to go along with it. It's just a shame the game is on hold and the dev won't be back until next year.

As a Turkish guy i wanted to support an Azeri brother by dropping my review.

10/10 Beautiful Hotwife - That model we see at everywhere seems to be the recipe for this.
9/10 Story - It happens in an untouched place in forum and there a lot of different things happening while bringing lots of new stuff to table.
7/10 Corruption - Same old same old.
8/10 Graphics

I gotta be honest, just like in 'Exciting Games' this game also had a very slow start with MC, so much so that i wasnt sure if she was ever gonna get laid, but in last updates it became clear that this was a corruption game too.

I like the plot and characters, really eager to see this after the hiatus ends!

I like the corruption aspect. One criticism I have is that there are a lot of sex scenes which as of right now have nothing to do with the main characters.

The characters are well designed, and the animations were decent, the cheating and taboo elements of the game were the highlights for me. Overall, it has a very unique main character / setting and an engaging story to go along with it. It's just a shame the game is on hold and the dev won't be back until next year.