I’m not often inclined to play horror games, despite having a fairly high tolerance for the genre in every other medium. I can watch horror, because I don’t have to be an active participant beyond not fleeing from my seat. I can read horror, because it’s not as visceral or tangible when it’s just words on a page. But if I have to actively engage with horror through my actions, my adrenaline goes haywire. I panic. I forget how to breathe. Some people might enjoy this, but I don’t.
Yet, at the recommendation of many writers at TheGamer, I played Mouthwashing. I’d read praise for the game in many publications, it was only three hours long, and I was promised by someone at publisher Critical Reflex that it didn’t have that many jumpscares. I decided to be brave, and I was rewarded with a harrowing tale of insanity, abuse, and the evils of capitalism.
Solutions for some of Mouthwashing’s puzzles ahead. It’s only three hours long, just play it and come back.
Mouthwashing Is A Terrifying Experience
You might think that my criticism of the game hinges on the fact that I’m a big baby who can’t tolerate horror, but you’d be wrong. While yes, I was scared, and yes, I did temporarily forget how to inhale and exhale like a normal person, Mouthwashing’s horror is executed excellently.
Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley has written about her favourite sequence in the game, and I have to agree – there are many incredible horror sequences in Mouthwashing. Many of its scariest moments are implemented through dreamlike, surreal excursions into the depths of the Tulpar, the ship that the characters are trapped on.
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The sequence Stacey detailed is a long trip into the bowels of the ship to retrieve a bottle of mouthwash. Another level has you wandering through the vents of the ship, chased by an impossibly fast, impossibly large centipede-like creature. Yet another has you wandering through a graveyard, pursued by your axe-wielding crewmate.
Because these sequences are so tense and have stakes – fail and die, sent back to the start of the level in perpetuity – these are Mouthwashing’s most heart-pounding moments. Yet, at the same time, they’re the most frustrating.
What all these levels have in common is that there’s an element of puzzle-solving to them, but the way through is never clear. To get the bottle of mouthwash, you have to creep through the halls of the ship’s cargo hold so your footsteps aren’t audible. If you’re too loud, the blind beast in the hold will hear you and devour you. To get through the vents successfully, you have to run through the labyrinth, avoiding the insect as best as you can as it rushes towards you. To get away from your crewmate, you have to stop him from getting the jump on you and shoot him as he runs to strike you with the axe.
Mouthwashing’s Scares Give Way To Tedium
These are terrifying the first few times you attempt them, and it might take a few tries – again, it’s never really very clear what the way through is. These hallucinatory sequences rely on dream logic, which is great for tension and atmosphere, but not so great when you’re trying to solve a puzzle.
The problem with the cargo hold level is that creeping through takes forever. I played it while barely pushing on my thumbstick, crawling forward at a snail’s pace while the beast screamed around me. It was scary for about thirty seconds, then it quickly became tedious. I would follow a trail of blood to a dead end, then have to backtrack and take a much longer way round, moving at a geriatric’s hobbling speed the whole way. I knew nothing would happen as long as I went slowly, so the tension quickly evaporated.
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With the insect vent maze, the tension also disappeared, but more because of frustration than pacing. It’s easy to get killed and have to start over – once you’ve figured out the logic of the level through experimentation, it’s no longer frightening. The atmosphere is gone, because you’ve spent too much time noodling around in it.
It was similar with the crewmate. He scurries around you as you walk through the graveyard, trying to come at you from behind so you don’t have time to whip around and shoot him. Once I figured this out, I just had to back into a corner and pace in the same spot, waiting for him to eventually approach me. After the first few times he killed me, I was more annoyed than frightened.
There’s A Thin Line Between Stakes And Frustration
I appreciate these sequences for what they conveyed – each dream sequence was scary in its own way. And if it wasn’t possible to fail the level, there would be no reason to care about it. But at the same time, the way these puzzles were laid out meant that it was easy for fear to give way to frustration within a minute or so, and being able to fail them so easily meant that the multiple attempts threw the pacing of the story off completely, disrupting the tension that’s so carefully crafted throughout the game.
Mouthwashing is still an excellent game. Since so much of the game is about attempting to own up to the responsibility of doing bad things, the interactivity of these surreal levels complements the narrative. You have to take things into your own hands to ‘deal with it’, as our deuteragonist Jimmy often says. I understand how these sections tie into the game’s overall storytelling. I just wish they weren’t so clunky, because it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I guess I could use some mouthwash too, huh?
Mouthwashing is a first-person horror game following the dying crew of a shipwrecked space freighter.
Who could have known what good ol’ Captain Curly was capable of? Guess he thought his crew dying alongside him was only right. But some men can’t even kill themselves properly. Maimed, limbless and unable to speak, but alive, Curly is now at the mercy of the crew he has doomed to a slow death.
Descend into Madness
Follow the lives of the crew as they weather starvation, isolation, and each other. People were never your strong suit anyway.
Zero Chance of Rescue
The ship will run out of power within six months. Food rations long before that.
Immersive Storytelling
Pay attention to your surroundings.
Psychological Scares
Your eyes are lying.
Unforgiving Narrative
Hope to die, or for goodness sake, pray that everyone else did.