I don’t really get scared by video games. If one suddenly makes a loud noise in the dark then I’ll probably jump, but that’s just human nature. A split second reaction before I move on with my life. But I have friends who refuse to play horror games because they’re too intense. I know people at TheGamer who won’t touch anything more frightening than The Last of Us. Those statements are mutually exclusive, I don’t have any friends at TheGamer. This is all running through my head because of Mouthwashing.
I played the three-hour long horror action-narrative indie game as part of a buzzer beating dash (I don’t take my own advice) to round out 2024 before I turn in my Game of the Year list. You can check out the ones already published here. I didn’t know much going in except that it came highly recommended, and was scary. I understood this from the first scene. As the corridors around you flash red and scream sirens, you keep running through doors until you have no direction left but to turn around, where you are suddenly confronted by a massive cartoon horse an inch away from your face. It got me. But it didn’t impress me. Then I kept playing.
Mouthwashing Is Low On Jumpscares, High On Fear
This was the kind of scare where I caught myself lurching back in my chair, then laughed to myself. I think of scares of this nature like they’re a prank. Anyone who saw Wicked in theatres recently will have had a similar moment towards the end when the whole cinema gasped at a loud jump scare, then collectively chuckled at its own reaction. It’s like you’re saying to the game ‘good one, but you won’t get me next time’. Mouthwashing got me next time.
There are few other scares like this in the game. Instead, it’s all foreboding dread. This first occurs when you have to feed painkillers to a critically injured crewmate, grotesquely peeling his bandaged mouth open in order to force them in, raw flesh squelching, bone grinding. Everything is similarly unpleasant. The game is non-linear, bouncing before and after the accident, so it’s deliberately disorienting.
It’s a small ship, but there’s no in-game map. You learn to navigate the space by following signs. But sometimes a corridor feels longer than you remember it. Darker. Louder. Mountains of mouthwash (your cargo, and post-accident food source) pile up into small mounds, and you mistake the silhouettes for bodies. Sometimes a corridor really is longer than you remember it, and the stairs are replaced by a slippery slope into nothing, until you land in a pool of blood where galaxies dance above your head and the only way out is a broken ladder.
Mouthwashing’s Cargo Hold Offers Its Best Scare
The most unsettling sequence comes about halfway through, in a level I shall dub BE QUIET. It begins as Anya, the ship’s nurse, locks herself in the medical room. Anya has not coped well with the accident, and doesn’t seem to be very experienced or competent as a nurse – hence why you have to administer the painkillers each day. It’s unclear whether Anya is intending to harm herself or the patient, but you need to get inside.
This leads you to search for a vent, and exploring the ship takes a surreal turn as you discover a grave marked with the flower of another (very much alive) crewmate, Daisuke. Interact with the flower and BE QUIET glitches across the screen as you end up in the cargo hold, except you’re not in the cargo hold. You’re in some strange version of it. It goes on forever. There are no lights. Paths are rotted away. Blood is smeared on the floor. And through the eerie music, every so often, the ground shakes and a roar rises up from hell.
It’s deeply disturbing. I started making my way around the cargo hold, my feet clattering beneath me. The noise gets louder, the ground shakes rougher, and I am eaten. BE QUIET. I am back at the start, and notice a note: A blind beast, aimless and restless/You can’t run from it. I don’t understand. I go on again, this time running faster to escape. My feet clatter worse than ever. The noise gets louder again. I am eaten BE QUIET and I am back at the start.
I realise I must move slowly, so slowly that my feet do not make a sound. But it is such a stiflingly uncomfortable place to be, with the scratching soundtrack and the animalistic roar that I cannot bear to listen. I take out my headphones. I do not laugh to myself through the fear. I do not smile and feel I have been pranked. I simply want this to be over.
Mouthwashing Is A Disturbing Experience
I catch a glimpse of the noise chasing me, the UV light needed for the blood smear revealing its face. The cartoon horse again. Everything is the cartoon horse. I slowly creep around the hold, but boxes block my path. I take the long way around, then think I have ended up back where I started, so I run and hope I am not far from wherever I need to go. I am wrong. I am noisy. I am eaten. BE QUIET.
The trick here is not difficult. You need to go the long way around, and rather than ending up back at the start, you end up on the other side of the boxes and can continue. This takes you to another passage blocked the same way, you go the long way around again, and you reach the goal – a cartoon horse holding a bottle of mouthwash. Everything is the cartoon horse.
I know the route now, and see that it was simple. Not bad design, not even all that tricky, just a very simple puzzle. I couldn’t do it because I couldn’t think straight, and I couldn’t think straight because I was frightened. Not shocked by a sudden loud noise, not the victim of a practical joke. Frightened. Heart-racing, sweat running frightened. It takes a special game to do that to me, and Mouthwashing is that special game. It makes BE QUIET my most, and least, favourite level of the year.
- Released
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September 26, 2024
- Developer(s)
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Wrong Organ
- Publisher(s)
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Critical Reflex