Mouthwashing, the Human Horror

You know a dev team is talented when their first outing and what was meant to be a side-project by a bunch of students is something as impressive and deeply captivating as something like *How Fish is Made*. I am by no means surprised to see that Mouthwashing taking the whole internet landscape by storm, even if it took me a damn year to get to it.

Better late than never, I guess.

Part of the ship. Part of the Crew.

I find it beyond funny that the times Mouthwashing is at its worst are in the times were it wants to mimic modern horror game tropes a bit too closely: the sections with the blind capitalist horse and the baby centipede are by far the lower points of the experience, moments where it seems to be trying a little *too* hard even when it’s not necessary. It’s not to say they are lacking in a sense of place or meaning —at times this is a very ‘’I know writers that use subtext and they are all cowards’’ kind of game, but very never in a bad way safe from those two weird nuggets of sunshine—, but they **are** extremely subpar and somewhat forced interjections that lose all the momentum they had going for them. Seeing that horse’s dangling head right in front of me was creepy the first time, but when what follows it is a slow walk though a very, VERY long metal labyrinth that is as easy to overcome as stopping every 5 seconds, then you lose me. The baby centipede as utterly dreadful and implications almost as disgusting as Jimmy, but then playing it is fucking hilarious. I’m not a fan of peek-a-boo horror but at least that section made me laugh, so brownie points.

This is a long-winded and excruciating way to say that those too supposedly creepy sections with a fucked-up monster that follows you PALE in comparison to getting haunted by a middle-aged blue-collar man hunting you in a cemetery. That could be the entire game’s motto, put that shit on the trailer or something.

May we never go to hell but always be on our way!

If there’s any kind of terror in Mouthwashing that rivals its human horror, then it’s the corporate one. An entity that witnesses the endless reaches of space and sees in them only an opportunity for capital trade and perfect limits, a way to put a chokehold on its subordinates till the humanity leaves their bodies. All assets perfectly calculated and all chances for deductibility already accounted for. What faces or names can you even point towards when the only silhouette you can see is the one of cartoon horse some of the employees jack off to. 5 months trapped in the middle of nothing and yet its presence can be felt, taunting them, so ingrained in everyone’s minds it can hardly be reclaimed from the entity that spawned it. From the coal mines of the XVIII century to the era of the stars, and yet fuck all has changed.

We haven’t changed.

Everyone on the Tulpar has tried hold on the hope in some way or another, even the ones that crashed the goddamn ship. A firm believe, nativity, or when neither is present, drowning them till the thoughts stay quiet. Every chapter finds a way to rip a new hole in your chest, the certainty that things are going to keep going down hill, even the glimpses we get from the future may be better than the ones we get from the past right after. The ship itself remains the same, but the eyes of Jimmy and Curly change it into contorting it, impossible hallways born of their own mind, nightmares that reflect their regrets, but that also ignore their biggest sins.

Jimmy was a terrible human being before the crash, but the descent made sure everyone would spiral downwards with him, even the one he had already hurt the most. His necessity for being recognized as important even when they are floating in the middle of nowhere and feed his self-indulgence, and in the end, the only person he finds solace on and turns into his beacon is the one that cannot speak and the one he cut his leg off and forced-feeds it to himself. He doesn’t even say anything when he sees Anya’s corpse.

Daisuke held to positivity for as long as it was humanly possible. Swansea used his last breathing moments to think back on his errors and the life that led him to be the snappy bastard he became. Anya found beauty even on the imperfection of a screen.

It’s a gut-wrenching game to go through, an essay on the worst of humanity and its deep innocence, a uncomfortably perverted look in man’s worse instics and the excuses born out of it coated in some of the best, most ill-inducing sounds design I’ve had the pleasure (?) of ever hearing. The imagery will fucking hunt me for a while, almost as much as the screams.

Hell isn’t us, it’s the people that bring it and let it go by, looking the other way. Or dragging us all with them

Worst birthday cake ever tho, way too meaty if you ask me.

Happy (belated) Halloween and Feliz Samaín, everyone!