You could say I’m not much of fan of horror. I’ve learned a lesson from music: if I think I dislike a genre, it just means I’m picky and I haven’t found the particular examples that hit just right. House of Leaves, Soma, and Alien are some examples that proved to me I can enjoy horror—it’s just a hard sell.
I’m not sure if I enjoyed Mouthwashing. I’m not sure it’s a game that’s designed to be enjoyed. I am enough of a gaming hipster to appreciate when a game tries to evoke a mood, even if it’s an unpleasant one and it doesn’t always pull it off perfectly.
Mouthwashing is a short (3-4 hour) game about the five-person crew of the Pony Express ship Tulpar, a long-hauler transport spaceship on a year-long delivery run. We don’t see the world beyond the ship. We don’t know what it’s like out there, or how far into the future we are. The world of Mouthwashing happens in the grimy, poorly lighted corridors of the Tulpar. The visuals are purposely lo-fi; not only grimy, dark, and gory, but viewed through a crunchy, pixelated filter.
The tale is nonlinear, jumping back and forth several months around a cataclysmic incident. The ship hits an asteroid, crippling it and leaving the crew stranded with limited supplies.
In the past, we play as Curly, the captain of the ship. During the crash, Curly is severely injured, wrapped in bandages, bedridden, and in excruciating pain. A single bloodshot eye peers out from the bandages. A row of bare teeth, with no lip to cover them. In the scenes after the crash, with Curly nearly out of commission, we play as Jimmy, the co-pilot, Curly’s longtime friend and the guy who just can’t seem to get his life together. Rounding out the crew are Anya, the medic; Swansea, the mechanic; and Daisuke, the intern who was unlucky enough to board at the last minute before launch.
The gameplay mostly revolves around conversations among the crew, with occasional simple puzzles and item-fetching. There are two brief “gamier” sections where some reflex and strategy are required, but I found these to be the weakest and most frustrating portions of the game.
As the months go on and the characters become desperate, civility breaks down. It becomes clear that there are dark secrets among the crew. The game becomes more and more surreal, reflecting Jimmy’s progressively deteriorating mental state. Flash backs to Curly slowly reveal the hidden secrets that Jimmy doesn’t want to talk about, or even acknowledge to himself.
As the crew turn on each other, the ship’s actual corridors fall away, leaving us and Jimmy in a mostly hallucinated world where we can only guess what is real and what is metaphorical. It all ends in blood and tears, as Jimmy tries and fails to hide from a series of horrible truths.
Mouthwashing echoes a classic strain of horror where a small group of people are trapped together in the face of a monster or horrific situation. Here though, despite being lost in space, the horrors are decidedly human.
Mouthwashing is made by Swedish studio Wrong Organ and is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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