Mouthwashing was reviewed based on a pre-release copy provided by the publisher, CRITICAL REFLEX. no money was exchanged, and all opinions are my own. thanks, CRITICAL REFLEX!
Mouthwashing is a bleak game with regular allusions to and depictions of suicide, self-harm, domestic violence, medical trauma, and other upsetting topics. readers and players who are particularly sensitive to things of that nature may want to skip this one.
before i know anything about Mouthwashing, the new horror game from Wrong Organ, i know that it hates me. the very first thing the game asks - or forces - me to do is kill myself. i don’t realize that i’m killing myself until it’s too late, but once the pieces are in place, once i know that i’m hurtling towards a particularly gruesome demise of my own making, Mouthwashing sees fit to torture me even further.
Mouthwashing’s opening is one of the more confrontational and upsetting things i’ve experienced in a video game, and i actually had to put my Steam Deck down for a few hours before i could get back to the game. things do quiet down a tiny bit afterwards, at least for long enough to introduce the game’s main cast, the crew of Pony Express’s Tulpar.
Pony Express is a long-haul interplanetary shipping company, and the Tulpar is one of its last manned ships, a vessel on the brink of obsolescence floating through empty space. the Tulpar has recently crashed into an asteroid following a murder-suicide attempt that only the captain, Curly, can explain. unfortunately, Curly was left horribly disfigured and unable to speak in the crash.
Curly might be the purest example of Mouthwashing’s near-constant, oppressive unpleasantness. before the crash, he was well-liked by even the grumpiest cynics onboard the Tulpar, a competent and friendly face holding together a hopelessly dysfunctional band. now, he’s a motionless lump of bandaged flesh, kept barely alive and conscious by a crew that’s grown to hate him. he has no way to defend or explain himself, no way to make amends with his friends in what he knows are his final days.
none of the characters in Mouthwashing are fully voiced, but sometimes, Curly wails and moans. you can hear him from anywhere on the ship.
the player assumes the role of Jimmy, a longtime friend of Curly’s who’s been left in the position of interim captain. Jimmy’s is an unpleasant mind to inhabit. even before the crash, we learn, Jimmy was immature and irresponsible, often mean, and wholly unsuited to lead. in his new position, he’s grown to resent “his” crew as well as his captain. mostly, he seems to hate himself.
Mouthwashing is presented out of chronological order, in a series of vignettes. sometimes you’re onboard the Tulpar pre-crash, having a quiet conversation with your crewmate… until the world is ripped away from you, the canvas of reality shredded down the middle, paint smeared across the whole of time. now, you’re a few months in the future, talking that same team member down from a suicide attempt.
on one awful occasion, Mouthwashing shows you the horrible consequences of an action then leaps a few moments backwards to force you to carry out the action for yourself. this inspires a feeling of hopelessness and dread like almost nothing i’ve ever experienced in a video game.
i find the sound of Mouthwashing especially terrible. the ship is often quiet, but every time a door opens or an alarm sounds or something moves, it’s just a little louder, a little more aggressive, a little more violent than you’d like it to be. that sound design does a magnificent job of making the Tulpar feel like a hostile place at all times. when there’s no immediately apparent threat in the environment, it starts to feel like the environment is the threat.
perhaps the most striking thing about Mouthwashing, the reason i suspect most players will be drawn to it, is the look of it all. i took far fewer screenshots than i normally would for a bug quest, in part because Mouthwashing runs just two and a half hours, but mostly because any given image from Mouthwashing feels like more of a spoiler than any given plot point.
suffice to say, if you’re drawn to spaces that defy understanding, a world that feels unstable beneath your feet, environments that morph and shift to conform to your nightmares, then Mouthwashing was made to torment you.
Mouthwashing is not the fun, thrilling horror of a Five Nights at Freddy’s or an Alien: Isolation. it doesn’t have the reproducible tight loops of a Resident Evil. Mouthwashing feels more like a rot, a disease that takes purchase in your gut immediately and stays there well beyond its brief runtime. if you’re fond of misery (i certainly am), then Mouthwashing will provide.
Mouthwashing will release on Steam on Thursday, September 26th.