The Haunted Hoard: Mouthwashing (PC)

In Mouthwashing, a disturbed crew member of a delivery spaceship known as the Tulpar deliberately rams the vessel into an asteroid. Rather than leading to instant destruction though, the damaged vessel is left to float uselessly through space, waiting to see if rescue might eventually come for the small crew of five. While this first-person horror game might sound like it’s building up to a case of violent cabin fever, Mouthwashing instead sits in the uncomfortably realistic mundane nature of it all. People aren’t going to be at each other’s throats at the drop of a hat or become needlessly selfish the moment things look dire. However, as more details emerge about the crew and dark hallucinations start to show us the interior of some characters’ minds, you can start seeing the metaphorical side of this story about people forced to live despite the dark cloud hanging over their new everyday life.

 

Mouthwashing is not a very long game, its narrative focus stronger than other aspects of the experience. Across around 3 hours of potential play time, you are mostly moving about the Tulpar to talk with the other crewmates and given little tasks to assist with their survival. Suppression foam sealed cracks from the crash that you might need to break to get vital tools, a captain’s override system must be used at parts to access privileged areas, and sometimes even something simple like making food pops up as a task to give a little interactivity. These aren’t just busywork though, especially as they help to nail in the glacial plight of the characters. Mouthwashing’s story will jump forward and back at various points across the time spent waiting in space or in the lead-up to the intentional crash, and walking around the cargo ship, you start to get that dull claustrophobia akin to being aboard a submarine. Very few walls have any decoration and corridors are often only as wide as they need to be, and when something does adorn the walls, it will be corny posters from the corporation you work for. Unfortunately, while the posters with company propaganda are a decent touch for nailing in how little the company truly cared about sending people out into the depths of space with few guard rails for disaster in place, they are almost too on the nose with the satirical disclaimers undercutting every positive message a bit too overt.

However, simpler things like large screens displaying simulated sunsets for an artificial simulacrum of nicer life on Earth do fit in better, especially since the game’s chosen art style filters it to make it look even less like it would bring comfort to a group of people aboard such a harsh metallic vessel. Mouthwashing aims to mimic the low-poly look of games for the original PlayStation, it giving the game a grimy and unsettling look that stays in effect even when you’re not seeing something deliberately gruesome. The heavily bandaged Curly is a good case of where the art style is particularly striking. One wide eye staring between a break in the wrappings, his teeth constantly exposed due to his missing lips, and his red skinless flesh haunting and gruesome but the art style also makes it easier to see it and accept his appearance without it being so gnarly. His disturbing appearance is meant to be hard to look at though, an uncomfortable subject since the rest of the crew are unscathed by the crash but left to tend to him despite his inability to speak.

 

Mouthwashing’s character relationships also have an uneasiness to them even when they’re nominally cooperating to survive. There’s a sense of dread hanging over things as you see characters deteriorate in simpler ways, not really at each other’s throats but losing reasons to hold in their thoughts and inhibitions as time wears on. The game can make some jarring jumps ahead in time that make you realize how long they’ve all been sitting in their situation, and how each person handles it leads to a bubbling tension as you wait for something to go south. There’s Anya, the nervous medic who can’t do much since the incident. Swansea, the repairman much older than the rest of the crew and a bit slovenly and easier to anger. Daisuke, Swansea’s intern who is eager but not too bright meaning he can’t really read any situation he finds himself in. And the main character for much of the playthrough Jimmy, who has become interim captain with Curly so heavily injured who feels the weight of responsibility pressing in on him the more time wears on and feelings of guilt come crushing down on him. Many of the members of the crew won’t directly address certain issues, talking around them because its easier than being honest about something dark or bleak. And as you keep seeing them circle subjects but not quite reach them, actions they take take on a new layer of dread. Hearing that a bottle of mouthwash has a 14% Ethanol content can be surprisingly unnerving, and when something breaks through the doldrums of their life, you hesitantly perform whatever mundane tasks might pull back the veil on some uncomfortable development finally pushed through the life of hollow routine.

Sometimes not looking directly at the subject matter can make it feel like Mouthwashing does not tell as full-bodied of a narrative as it could if it did zoom in and make more explicit statements on its later reveal, but not addressing it is also clearly part of the underlying metaphor about not confronting an uncomfortable subject matter. There are even moments of gore that might seem a little over the top after the game seems so cautious before then, but they almost seem to exist more as a literal representation of one of the core themes of the uncomfortable truths behind social responsibility and how we actually react to something horrible compared to how it is portrayed in fiction or imagined when you only hear about it. Because Mouthwashing does not force your attention on it though it can get a bit lost in the imagery as hallucinations become a more present factor, especially as the game’s later half starts to lean into more involved action segments as you view things that aren’t literally occurring.

 

Mouthwashing will have periods where you step into a world that’s clearly fiction, the potential of uncanny and unsettling sights increasing as it wraps up character insecurities in meaningful imagery. However, while they can often be working to make a point easier to pick up on or represent part of the internal struggle someone is having with something eerie and appropriately morbid to match the severity of their thoughts, sometimes the activities are a bit of a barrier to the game’s continuation. You’ll be thrown into a sneaking section where you must occasionally stop to avoid being sensed by a blind monster or be left to wander a graveyard with a slow-firing revolver to protect yourself, these often more about dull periods of waiting with failure just dragging out the section as you need to do more waiting in your next attempt.  Puzzles usually aren’t too involved so they don’t slow things down too much, especially with their limited variables so you can bumble your way through if you’re not picking up on their asks well, but Mouthwashing was almost a narrative exploration game mostly but threw in moments of peril that wouldn’t be a good fit even if the game was more of a stealth game.

 

Much like the lurches back and forward in time to piece together the uncomfortable nature of what lead to the crash and how everyone is reacting to it after, excursions into more surreal mindspaces do feel justified in laying down some of the building intrigue and letting you start picking up clues without it having to be forced into character’s mouths. If the action didn’t cause you to stew a bit too long in some of the segments it would help keep up the game’s pace, the obnoxious length of the crew floating adrift kept bearable by the player thanks to the time skips but with the environments and the hallucinations helping to cover some of the ground in terms of nailing in the passing time and the building tensions. The sparse decor of the ship undergoing small changes as the crew has to make it more livable or grows frustrated with their dwindling resources can serve as a better picture of everyone’s mental state than peering into the warped perceptions at times, but a less metaphorical version of Mouthwashing might have been too heavy and not as eye-catching, so peppering in more fantastical horror over top the mundane dread does piece it together into a narrative with more to unpack and consider.

THE VERDICT: Mouthwashing can lose a little steam when it integrates stealth and action sections to its detriment, but the core narrative works well both on the apparent level of characters coming to grips with the mundane but dark situation they find themselves in as well as the more thematic layers revealed as the underlying narrative and relationships become clear. Despite the science fiction premise and the journeys into gruesome surreal spaces, Mouthwashing is about uncomfortable truths about how certain issues are addressed, and while the low poly graphics give a layer of abstraction to ease the bleak tone some, there is some rough but meaningful commentary to be found beneath the effective surface level horror touches.

 

And so, I give Mouthwashing for PC…

A GOOD rating. Mouthwashing can capture that sort of social dread that can come from something as simple as seeing someone waiting for you in a doorway or noticing they are missing from their bed at night. It won’t throw the whole game into some absurd over the top scenario to play into the expected tropes of being locked in a seemingly doomed situation, which makes it more uncomfortable when the monotony of the situation is disrupted by a disruption whose direction you can’t quite predict. The sense that things are wrong and will get worse looms but no one wants to look directly at it, and the themes of guilt and responsibility start to thread their way through the narrative as you see how it extends beyond just the apparent concerns. There is a good bit to pick apart as you reflect on it, and it’s short enough for a quick replay after to notice extra details or even enable the developer’s commentary, but sections where Mouthwashing wants more out of you than as a witness or simple participant do strain things some. That discomfort during the sections where you can fail and need to retry doesn’t quite hit the same sort of metaphorical underpinnings as the rest of the adventure and could have even potentially worked without fail states, but much more of the game is about seeing the gradual decline of the Tulpar that comes from issues deeper than a ship adrift in space. Its indirect nature can sometimes mean it can’t dig into some elements as deeply as it could have or present them with extra layers for analysis, especially with some unanswered questions that might have been a bit better to look closer at than more time spent with metaphorical gory hallucinations. Really though, only the sometimes too cartoonish corporate critiques really feel like they obstruct the game’s tone, although there is definitely a layer of intentional absurdity at times that might be an attempt at levity in a game that could get perhaps too depressing without it.

 

Mouthwashing probably needed more time to look more directly at its issues and frame them properly, some moments harder to place the meaning of because they hinge on incomplete pictures. A psychological horror story not putting all of its information forward is hardly rare, but with its heavy subject matter and more realistic look at the ways people react and think about terrible things, it feels like some extra details to ruminate on would only make it a richer experience compared to the time instead devoted to more interactive segments that don’t build on the game’s foundations well. Mouthwashing has themes worth discussing and pondering with elements of horror and a more solid central narrative to make it effective even if you don’t want to sink your teeth into the motivations behind aesthetic choices or implications that aren’t spelled out for you. Just because the knife could have cut deeper doesn’t mean Mouthwashing is by any means ineffective, the game having a strong sense for information management, graphical direction, and multilayered themes that make it a rewarding horror narrative to get to the center of.