A good horror game scares you in the moment, but a great horror game stays in the back of your mind long after the credits roll. We’ve been blessed with a plethora of excellent horror games over the past few years, but with the arrival of October comes even more spooky games to give us the proper scares ahead of Halloween. Mouthwash With its shocking, repulsive images, the book immediately captivated me and held me captive under the weight of growing fear.
Mouthwash is a three-hour narrative experience set on the Tulpar, a Pony Express courier ship in the midst of a long-distance journey through space to deliver cargo. It’s the typical capitalist sci-fi dystopia; Humanity’s migration among the stars has done nothing to ease corporate control over workers’ lives. Nevertheless, the crew is a well-coordinated bunch: there is the grumpy veteran Swansea, the anxious and evasive nurse Anya and the cheerful himbo Daisuke. The crew is rounded off by the co-pilots Captain Curly and Jimmy. The game begins with a horrific crash that strands the ship and veers off course.
The game jumps back and forth in the timeline, showing us the dynamics of the crew before the crash and the growing desperation after the disaster. Months after the crash, the crew is still lost in space and desperately searching for an alternative source of food as their supplies are running low. The captain suffered severe burns in the crash, leaving him reliant on a dwindling supply of painkillers. No one is coming to pick them up, their supplies are running low, and all they have in the hold is box after box of mouthwash.
As Mouthwash continues, reality begins to blur and falter. Sometimes this happens diegetically; The Pony Express mascot appears more and more frequently, and motivational posters decorate the halls of the Tulpar. A crew member finds an old analog television playing old company animations where you shouldn’t be. In other cases, these surreal transitions mimic a game crash or graphical glitch. A few times I thought the game had crashed, but the broken graphics faded into a new scene.
There isn’t much in the way of combat or survival mechanics; Instead, the narrative is a grim march toward an inevitable end. An ax once used to deal with everyday emergencies is used for a darker purpose. Anya increasingly avoids her nursing duties and is afraid to approach Curly in his burned and mutilated state. Jimmy cracks under the pressure. The only one who stays happy the whole time is Daisuke, the absolute champion.
If this nightmare scenario intrigues you even a little, I highly recommend you take a look Mouthwash To steam or Itch.io. The game begins with a short message with the ship’s name, delivery status, and an ominous note: “I hope this hurts.” It certainly did, and that’s why my mind is still stuck in distant space aboard the Tulpar fixed.
