Remember Mary

Remember Mary is a narrative-driven surrealist adventure game. It follows Mary, a young girl in a world filled with her friends who she can help or hinder. In squigglevision.

Made in about 9 days for the "I can't write but want to tell a story" jam.

It will take around 10-15 minutes per play through.

Community discord - https://discord.gg/WDgBjXP

• Mobile friendly
• Gamepad compatible
• Mouse only mode, no keyboard required!
• Three different endings depending on your choices
• Over 600 lines of unique dialogue, with the narrative changing depending on what actions you take and in what order you take those actions
• Requires 7+ playthroughs to encounter all possible dialogue
• GMS2 Project file available for download
• An axolotl

Music and sounds are by JustWall Games - Listen to the soundtrack here!

Some suggestions and moral support from Benjamin Fearn

Game title was suggested by Tommy van Son

Testing by all of the above!

This game is mobile friendly, but make sure you check the 'mouse only' option or you will get stuck. On smaller screens, graphics and fonts are scaled down and may not appear as clearly.

The game may also be a little more difficult on mobile due to your fingers getting in the way, but it's a small price to pay for being able to play this game on the toilet.

(Major Spoilers ahead! Please play the game before reading this section!)

The game was largely inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft. Although the game does not really parallel her life or personality, a few major points in Wollstonecraft's life provided a good starting point for me to work from. Mary Wollstonecraft's early life was troubled by financial difficulty and domestic violence at the hands of her dad. This theme is floated across in the game - although there is little mention of Mary's dad, he is mostly spoken about in a negative tone, with her mother saying he's away but doesn't know where - she implies she doesn't really care and is actually quite thankful he's gone.

Mary Wollstonecraft attempted suicide on more than one occasion, but one attempt in particular involved an attempt at drowning herself in the River Thames. This failed as a stranger saw her and rescued her.

To parallel this, the theme of water is very prominent throughout Remember Mary, including one moment where you can choose to drown another character. Mary (the protagonist) also attempts suicide through drowning herself, only to be rescued.

The game is all based on Mary's (the protagonist) experiences after dying. Most of the world and actions in Mary's after-death experience are made up for the purposes of gameplay, with a few exceptions.

I have done some reading into what happens to people when they've died and been resurrected. From that I've taken the concept of Mary's mother being there to provide her comfort and reassurance.

A reasonably common theme I've read about with after-death experiences is "unfamiliar, but comforting figures", which is where the Masters of the Universe figures come from. In particular, ending 1/3 (what I would consider the "good" ending) features Mary joining some Masters of the Universe to travel the Universe. Although Mary remains dead in this ending, she has a very comforting end.

This game originally was intended to be quite different. It was going to be based in a quiet house and a neighbourhood where everyone was mysteriously missing to indicate something about the place wasn't right. This left me with limited ideas for where to take the gameplay, so instead I just decided to just do whatever I wanted to make it better as a game.

(End spoilers)