Mouthwashing (2024)

Mouthwashing is a short and deliciously bitter little gem - carrying forward simple and yet deceptive adventure mechanics into a deeply disturbing and satisfyingly bleak sci-fi tale.

Mouthwashing splits itself into various nonlinear vignettes to tell the story of a cargo spaceship stranded in space after a brutal crash. Jumping into different perspectives before and after the crash, the player is revealed enough to peel back a narrative that becomes more psychologically distorted as the truth comes out. In order not to reveal spoilers I'll keep things brief, but the game will ask of you to do some particularly disquieting things along the way.

As for actual gameplay, the game is fairly simple at first - move from one area to the other, figure out how a nutrition packet machine works, move the mouse to slice a cake. As the game progresses further there will be stealth segments, boss segments, strange contraptions that bring Phantasmagoria 2 to mind - rarely are these segments consistent and may require some trial-and-error but are never too frustrating to progress. That said, curiosity and willingness to do the unthinkable usually comes up as the answer.

Visually the game stands out impressively well - focusing on high aliasing and low-poly models the game hearkens back to a PSX-era survival horror game, leveraging more modern uses of deep shadows and cinematic lighting. Taking cinematic inspiration from things like Alien, Solaris, and even Johnny Got His Gun, the overall style feels familiar but also distinctly unique. Music is a little less distinct with more reliance on dark ambient and lo-fi synth, but those sit enough in the background to create an intense mood to supplement the grotesque and jarring sound effects.

Mouthwashing has left quite an impact on the video game and streamer community, packaging a punch of an extremely dark story in a well crafted narrative with small but satisfying bits of gameplay in between. Some may be tempted to just watch a playthrough but the most horrifying things must be experienced interactively to get that full impact

4.5/5 I'll leave this review relatively vague as this game is best to experience going in blind. Mouthwashing is a first person horror adventure game where what starts as a simple freighter job quickly spirals. Sure, it's a premise that's been used many times over in film and games, but this is a really fresh take on the catastrophe. It utilizes a nonlinear narrative to tell it's story effectively, slowly drip feeding you information.

There isn't much in terms of variation here in how things play out and it's more of a much more interactive walking simulator but there are a few minor puzzles and one challenge in the game to mix things up a bit.

Mouthwashing isn't just a disaster set piece gone wrong, it deals with some heavy and dark themes that make additional playthroughs have more context. Afterwards there are some achievements that aren't too difficult to get if that's your thing. Even at full price, this game is only $13 USD and every bit worth it.

Mouthwashing is a narrative focused indie horror game in old ps1-graphic. Stylistically speaking it is a proponent of what on itch.io already is a gigantic scene of such horror games that sporadically get published over an uncommerical anthology bundle called 'ps1-horror disc'.

These games were pioneers in readopting outdated 3d graphics at times when indies were, and still are, dominated by pixelgraphics. Mouthwashing has, like many other games in the scene, philosophical undertones and in general seems to neglect the cute vibes of mainstream indies for a slightly darker humour and generally more serious style.

With Mouthwashing and its over 20k steam reviews, Critical Reflex finally has succeeded in getting these interesting games deservedly out of their indie-indie-bubble into the double a-indie bubble, also with the other titles they published and will publish in the future.

Platform: PC

Playthrough: First Time

Language: English

Finish Status: Completed

Playtime: 5h

This was a great little game. Superb graphics, sound design is fantastic, and the vibes are great. I think the premise is fun and the theme is interesting. I feel like it ended up being quite short and it sort of removed a lot of the emotional impact for me for the finale. I like all these character, but would have liked to know more about them. Where are they from, and what drives them on a deeper level? All in all it was nice, but the quality and pacing not optimal.

I enjoyed the weird setting and vibes for some time until the creeping sensation set in that I was playing a game designed for YouTubers.

Three distinct sections of the game mostly involve trial and error in what is otherwise an interesting enough story. This would be fine if the gameplay in these sections was fun, but for the most part it's frustrating. The frustration along with disjointed horror designs makes the back half feel vapid at best.

It's a good premise and the execution seems great until the frustrating gameplay sections. Maybe people who are better at these kinds of trial and error games would enjoy it more, but it's not for me.

Few games do presentation as well, and as consistently, as Mouthwashing. From start to finish, the experience is drenched with this very unique, specific aesthetic and atmosphere. And in the first half of this 3-4 hour game, everything else lines up too. You are getting to know your surroundings, its all exploratory. Once the shit hits the fan, however, the cracks start to show up in that creepy, rusty visage.

When I learned that Wrong Organ, the developers of Mouthwashing, were actually Sweden-based, instead of Japanese, I was surprised. Because so many of the problems I had with the writing felt like problems I have with a lot of Japanese storytelling. Where they will often write poor character motivations and then cover that up by havcing the characters monologue them into reality, or try to paint over them with huge shows of emotion. It doesn't make the motivations any less nonsensical, but you can often overlook that because the melodrama is so sweet.

I think perhaps the brevity of Mouthwashing exacerbates this problem. The shifts in character and tone seem more jarring and out of line when it happens so suddenly. But because this is a 3 hour game, I can't see how there would have been an alternative. And frankly, I think Mouthwashing is caught between a rock and hardplace when it comes to that pacing problem. Because I was wishing it was a bit shorter in that last 20%, when I was thinking to myself, "Yeah, okay, I get it, can we get on with it now?"

The ending is pretty good, even if I felt the last 20% leading up to that point was a little tired and the motivations that lead to that climax were flimsy. It was still effecting the more I thought about it all, which is impressive.

Maybe I read too much. Maybe I play too many video games and everything that Mouthwashing is doing that not novel to me, and so that's why I'm a little more critical than the laity. And I love that this game exists and hope that Wrong Organ can keep making games and keep developing this, because it is an undeniably strong place to start, and their artists really know how to make a unique and consistent presentation. But for me, it only gets a 3 stars from me, one for each of the hours in its run time. It's a perfet 5/5 for vibes though, and I think that you should probably pick it up and give it a try just for that.

Mouthwashing takes a classic sci-fi horror setup and puts a spin on it by chopping its linear narrative into pieces and meticulously scrambling it up. This allows the player to experience the events which occurred on board the Pony Express in such a way that emphasizes and lends additional drama to the story's larger reveals while maintaining a solid intrigue throughout by providing a slow drip of information.

I don't feel like I can dig too much into the story without spoiling things, but I'd say that throughout the game's runtime I was pleasantly surprised again and again at the amount of thought put into the structure of its narrative and the characters. This is the type of game where playing through a second time will yield a bunch of fun hints and nods toward what is to come that can't be fully appreciated without that context of a first playthrough.

It's clever how it manages to weave its story in a way that rarely feels like it's withholding information just for the sake of a dramatic reveal. You're always learning something worthwhile in each scene such that there's very little to no wasted time here. I wish some scenes hit me a bit harder emotionally, but this is still an easy recommendation to make for any horror fan I think.

Found this better on paper than in practice I guess, but it impressed me with its artistic direction and its more surreal elements. I particularly like the sudden glitched-out transitions between the non-chronological segments of the story and the little bit of FMV that was incorporated, but there are a lot of other good visual ideas too.

Not necessarily as convinced by it from an interactivity point of view, largely taking the form of a basic adventure game that can occasionally be a bit annoyingly unclear about how to do things or what you can do at a given time. Some sections involving being chased are really annoying, though I will give props to one small part in a graveyard toward the end where some clunkiness and lack of clarity actually helps it feel incredibly tense, even if it did still get on my nerves for a minute. They just didn't otherwise feel like that.

I was intrigued at first about what this was setting up but ended up not necessarily that impressed with or interested in the actual "plot" and characters, to my surprise considering the enthusiastic fandom this thing has amassed. I do think it still works as a surreal narrative experience though, thanks to the interestingly scattered way it unfolds and some individual scenes that do leave an impression. With the exception of that part I mentioned before, the game's horror usually works best when it's more abstract than when it's going more directly visceral or gross, and luckily there's a fair bit of that more unexplainable weird stuff.

Worth checking out for sure, and I think that it's likely that this team could make something I like a lot in the future—this doesn't quite get there for me but still shows that promise.

Mouthwashing is an indie horror game, released the 26th of September for PC by team Wrong Organ (How Fish is Made) and published by CRITICAL REFLEX (Buckshot Roulette, Aeon Drive) with glowing Overwhelmingly Positive (96%) reviews on Steam.

The game oversees the Tulpar, a long-haul cargo vessel flying Pony Express colors, and its 5-men crew: Anya the doctor, Swansea the mechanic, Daisuke the engineering intern, Jimmy the co-pilot and Curly the captain, flying across space in a 368 days long haul to carry a non specified amount and type of cargo to their destination.

Done with excellent PSX reminiscent graphics along with a touch of cinematography and decadent lightning, the game is light weight, performs well without any major snag or even small inconvenience, letting you fully enjoy the atmosphere of a decaying space fairing vessel left adrift in space.

The plot is where the emphasis and the glowing reviews lie within this game: employing a non-linear storytelling approach, the plot unfolds between a week prior to the incident and almost three months after it, when the vessel has been already starfaring for almost 100+ days.

The game employs no cheap jumpscare tactics, instead aiming to upset and move the player through whatever sentiment the character inspires in them: for me, it was a blinding anger, such a blinding disparaging anger.

This game isn't meant to be just scary, it's meant to disgust you and make you mad, make you think and grit your teeth at the choices you're forced to make, second guess your very own steps as you - it's less of a horror game in the same vein as Iron Lung or Faith: The Unholy Trinity and more in the same vein as poignant as Bad Parenting or Re:Mothered could be.

Mouthwashing is a game about taking responsibility and about deeply flawed humans pitted against the worst of it all. Without going into too many spoilers, since it's a once-and-done experience once you've played it all: Mouthwashing is a game about taking responsibility and deep flaws.

Your captain has decided that everyone needed to die with him, putting the Tulpar into direct course collision against an asteroid, disabling the auto-pilot and, with it, every chance of ever surviving the act. But nobody really dies: all of your crew survives, even the badly burnt and injured captain, survive and you have to understand how to make due until Pony Express - the hyper-capitalistic company you're working for - notices you guys are missing and stranded. Food is a problem, oxygen too... and the cargo holds nothing but mouthwash, highly sugary in content too.

Taking full advantage of the unreliable narrator trope in both of the two points of view during the chapters, Mouthwashing does an amazing job at leaving you with a sense of confusion and anger. The more surreal parts of the game eviscerated from madness and delusions and integral core part of the game (such as Jimmy materializing his own guilt into the Pony Express's mascot) and the narration, as well as the writing and careful wording are terrifyingly good (main highlight was the tunnel segment, having to go backwards because you cannot look back not because of spooky jumpscare but because Jimmy cannot go back and therefore has nothing to look back to). People criticizing the corridor parts and chastising them as breaking the pace or "not being scary enough" miss that they aren't meant to be scary, they're meant to tie up who your unreliable narrator really is, how he sees what's happening in the form of his own twisted paranoia.

Don't pick Mouthwashing because it's a horror game - pick it up because it's an amazing narrative driven psychological thriller that will bloom some sort of feeling if you are attentive enough to understand all of its nuances.

Also, fuck you Jimmy. I hope this hurts.

I had absolutely zero expectations for this game. And I was surprised and disturbed, the game did a phenomenal job.

The review is going to have spoilers for the entire game, do not read past this point if you didn’t play the game or didn’t watch a video.

The good

• The music is very well done and several tracks are memorable, especially the main theme.
• The horror is completely realistic. There are no supernatural elements. No monsters, no eldritch beings, human egoism and stupidity can easily hit way harder than supernatural stuff… most horror movies with high reviews are actually thrillers based on real life events
• Despite being a sci-fi story, the story is brutally realistic. You play as Jimmy, a crew member of a cargo ship that crashed into an asteroid, it has been months since the crash and nothing is looking good; the captain has third degree burns and has no limbs, there’s no food, there’s no water, everyone is getting crazy, and the company that employs you has gone bankrupt so there’s possibly no rescue. I can see the inspiration on stranded crews
• The world is sci-fi but the realistic elements make it hit close to home. The company is abusive and uncaring yet controlling to the point that they drove themselves bankrupt, the crew has no hope of landing another job, the interstellar society has mechanized so much it made their jobs obsolete
• The plot twist is perfectly made. At first you think the captain made it, but when you reach the final 30 minutes, you finally assemble what actually happened; it shows how egoism, depression and narcissism can drive someone into committing a horrible act
• Jeremy’s meltdown is well made, the game despite using limited graphics managed to scare me. Especially the ending

The bad

• The game has little gameplay. Most of the time is “go here, go there, grab this, grab that”; this doesn’t change until the final 30 minutes where you can do more stuff.

Conclusion

The game is very disturbing, sad and realistic despite having a sci-fi premise. I personally think this should have been an animated adult movie because of the lack of gameplay, but even while being limited it did a great job at pulling realistic horror

Full disturbing moments that will probably haunt me for a while.

I like the fragmented way the story is told and how it evolves to slowly reveal what's going on and what has happened. The visuals are intense and well crafted, and there's a really cool-looking creature design in there.

I just wish the gameplay was a little more varied, but it is effective overall.

However, the game overstays its welcome. I didn't like the moments leading to the finale, as they were too abstract and just involved walking forward through corridors filled with all kinds of stuff. They felt like they stretched forever (the moments, not the corridors) and I could've done without them.