Mouthwashing Review – The Devil Is In The Details

Don’t let your worst moment define you. But what if your worst moment has doomed your whole crew? This is the situation we are faced with at the beginning of Wrong Organ’s psychological horror game, Mouthwashing, after Captain Curly attempts to end his life by purposely crashing the The Tulpur, a Pony Express Long-Haul Space Freighter. His attempt was unsuccessful.

The five crew members of the freighter are now stranded in space. Curly is heavily burned, limbless and left unable to speak after the crash. The crew bitterly keep him alive, forcing painkillers down his throat while questioning why they’re even bothering after what he did. Meanwhile, they have months left of power and little food supplies. Their only salvation is the currently locked up cargo hold. Jimmy, who takes on Curly’s role as Captain and leader of the crew, works to open the cargo hold. But to their dismay, every single one of the thousands of boxes inside is full of mouthwash.

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Curly’s attempt on his life has put the crew’s lives in danger.

Mouthwashing is a short game of roughly two and a half hours, but it’s impactful nonetheless. We spend the game switching from playing as Curly in the events leading up to the crash, revealing why he chose to do what he did, and then as Jimmy during its aftermath, which starts as listing off the months that go by since the crash until eventually we’re counting down to the ‘judgment’ – without knowing what this will be in judgment of. Meanwhile, the crew are frantically trying to find ways to survive while also keeping themselves together (and not) in the face of doom.

Designed to look like a PlayStation 1 game, Mouthwashing’s visuals are gorgeous. There’s something eerie about the choice of retro graphics, but the creativity in the trippy visuals and meaning behind them is impactful. From the moment the intro card popped up and showed that we’re crew members on a freighter, I instantly felt that Mouthwashing was taking inspiration from Alien and its ‘truckers in space’ approach – and it works well here too. The interior is futuristic, but at the same time retro, somewhere in between atompunk and the dirty, worn aesthetics of the Alien franchise with its kitschy 70s-style furniture and clunky technology. The ship design has constant reminders of the capitalist world that Mouthwashing is set it, which feels like another throwback to Alien. With Pony Express’ mascot plastering the walls and the ship being designed with only the company’s interests in mind (e.g the medical and cargo bays having locks on them but not the crew’s quarters).

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Mouthwash has many uses, for the crew members in Mouthwashing, its alcohol contents come particularly handy…

The way the ship’s dynamic artificial window feature is used also makes for a huge impact on Mouthwashing‘s visuals. We’re clearly able to distinguish the flashback scenes from the present due to the fact that, in the present, the windows are stuck on a sunset. This bathes the whole ship in a deep red hue. To begin with, it looks beautiful, but when you eventually realise it’s permanently stuck like that, it gives the ship a real apocalyptic look and further cement’s the crew’s ill fate. 

The soundtrack was also really effective, using a mixture of different styles and instruments to bring each scene to life, whether it’s a sleepy, moving keyboard track for emotional monologues, or a quickening and slowing intense beat to build up a climax of horror. The only voice acting comes from the television advertisements and radio, once again giving a voice to the game’s capitalist themes rather than the actual crew. Along with the visuals, this all comes together to create something truly cinematic.

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The sunset feature in the windows is beautiful to begin with.

Gameplay-wise, Mouthwashing mostly consists of fetch quests with the odd segments where we must run through endless corridors around a creature of sorts – whether that be a stealth section, defending ourselves, or avoiding something. These honestly felt like tid bits to what is otherwise a very impactful game and could have easily been removed. That being said, they certainly didn’t ruin the story. I did find that some sections were really poorly lit and that would often confuse me on where I was or where I needed to go next, but that’s the only minor nitpick I have with Mouthwashing.

Mouthwashing is a horrific game, in the sense that the character’s actions and unveiling of the story is where the horror lies rather than monsters and jump scares. What’s that quote about the demons in hell actually being among us? The best thing is that a lot of the more grueling details in this tragic tale aren’t laid flat out, you’ve got to read between the lines and analyze certain conversations and actions to fully see the whole picture. Mouthwashing is easily a game you could play twice, the second time being when you pick up on what you couldn’t see before.

Jess reviewed Mouthwashing on PC with a review code.

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