Game Over: Mouthwashing

When YouTuber Gab Smolders posted her playthrough of Mouthwashing with the title, “Not for the squeamish,” I knew the video would be the perfect way to begin this spooky season. Then, just five minutes in, the seams of reality appeared to be fraying in this game’s universe. I watched Gab loop through the endless corridors of a space freighter with eerie whale-like music building in the background, a creepy pony blocking her path out of nowhere, and an alarm signalling the ship’s imminent, inevitable crash to come — a crash that the player character had just initiated for an unknown reason. The visuals and sounds get increasingly disorienting until the audio jarringly glitches, everything fades to white, and we jump to two months after the crash. Already, this seemed like the kind of psychological horror and captivating premise I’d been looking for. I quickly hit pause, purchasing the game before spoiling myself further. With a two-hour runtime, I finished it in one sitting, but I think if it were longer, I’d have just as easily lost all semblance of time to wrap up this haunting tale — I’m not convinced I would’ve been able to think of anything else otherwise.

Developed by Wrong Organ, Mouthwashing is a first-person horror game that, as mentioned, begins with a captain’s ultimate betrayal, having you play out the actions he took to steer the Pony Express space freighter straight into an asteroid and his descent into a strange corridor-filled nightmare afterwards. However, once the scene switches to two months later, your perspective changes to that of Jimmy, who — judging by his dialogue with his three other crewmates/survivors — isn’t the same person who caused the crash. Thus begins our intro to the rest of the cast: Swansea, a hardened Pony Express veteran with a stubborn disposition; Daisuke, an impressionable yet kindhearted young man being mentored by Swansea; and Anya, a thoughtful, empathetic nurse who seems nervous and scared most of the time, but who wouldn’t be, given the situation? Then there’s Captain Curly; he’s horribly injured, and you could mistake him for a mummy, considering his entire body is bandaged, leaving only his mouth and one eye visible. He’s a gruesome and troubling sight to behold when we see him in Anya’s medical station, especially because he’s the reason the crew’s survival hangs in the balance, and yet, they’re still keeping him alive with the little resources they have. The answer to “Why did he do it?” is one that will unveil itself as we progress.

While I don’t want to give too much away in regards to the narrative — as it’s best experienced first-hand — I can say that I love Mouthwashing’s commitment to overturning your sense of reality and disrupting any sense of comfortability in this seemingly nice, retro-futuristic spaceship. For one, the story is told in a disjointed, non-linear fashion, jumping from past to present to future in a way that jumbles its events like puzzle pieces spilt out messily on a tabletop, and the picture you’re putting together is the “why” of the crash. Moments of madness are also interwoven into many sections (increasingly so the further we get), sending us into nightmarish hallucinations as we dive deep into a disturbed mind where deep feelings of regret, guilt, denial, pain, and anger are illustrated in environmental details, strange monstrosities, and violent actions. I eventually came to realise that I was dealing with an unreliable narrator as well, requiring me to fill in gaps and question past interactions, which gave me a permanent sense of unease once I hit the last third of the game and heightened the impact of the truth by the end.

Half walking sim, half point-and-click adventure, Mouthwashing felt fun and, most of the time, fairly easy. The atmosphere and story certainly take centre stage, but there are still plenty of gameplay moments, such as finding hidden codes with a scanner and making a birthday cake with the ship’s limited ingredients. Most of these active sequences are enjoyable, but I found some shuttered the pacing a bit. There’s a section that has you evading an invisible enemy, which tracks any sound you make, and you can only tell where it is based on boxes it moves in the environment and static on your screen — reminding me a lot of Amnesia’s terrifying water monster. I don’t mind the concept of slowly sneaking by an enemy in a game of cat-and-mouse, but the maze this section makes you go through is far too long, so much so that it quickly shifts from scary to tedious, a delicate line for horror games to balance.

Perhaps my issue is just dangerous mazes in general, as there’s another one towards the end of the game that had me dodging a (thankfully visible) monster that caught me in a directionless panic. The end of the game is simultaneously the most riveting and frustrating because, on the one hand, this wild story is coming together in a gut-wrenching way, and on the other hand, you get a lot of these drawn-out enemy encounters that feel a bit out of place with the walking-sim, story-heavy elements. I get wanting a game to feel, well, more gamey, but a little more polish could’ve been great. That said, the other gameplay moments, like solving a corridor’s riddle when it prevents you from moving forward or some of the more gruesome puzzles that I won’t detail here, fall right in line with the experience and rarely cause hiccups in how the playthrough flows.

When it comes to Mouthwashing’s soundscape, all I can really say is: Wow. The effects are precise and often make my ears curl into themselves (if that were possible), from the almost watery sound of Captain Curly’s jaw opening to the distorted screams when a leg gets cut off. Though I know the setting is space, the freighter often felt like the inside of a submarine to me, with all its muffled background noises that give off a “submerged” sound; I find the idea of space and the deep sea equally unnerving so that definitely made me a bit on edge. At one point, I pretty much spooked myself by listening a little too hard as I heard a second set of footsteps coming after my own. I hadn’t realised that the task I was on required Daisuke to follow me, so I fully expected a jumpscare when I turned around and breathed a sigh of relief when it was just another character.

So, as you can probably tell, Mouthwashing isn’t about dental hygiene (in fact, I didn’t see a toothbrush anywhere). It’s an indie horror title that leans into a lot of surreal and macabre imagery, showcasing a mind’s descent into madness. I do recommend heeding the content warnings on its Steam page if you plan on picking it up yourself. Some of its scenes and gameplay moments are definitely “not for the squeamish,” so take care if you’re sensitive to body horror. All in all, I had a great time with the story, and it was one of those experiences that left me in a sort of Mouthwashing haze after playing it. I’ll need a break before going after all the achievements, but I’m happy it’s a rare entry in my “completed” list of games.