Mouthwashing review
There were a few games last year that we didn't have time to review, so before 2025 gets too crazy we're playing review catch-up and rectifying some of these omissions. So if you're reading this and wondering if you've slipped through a wormhole back into 2024, don't worry, you've not become unfastened from time. We're just running late.
I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting back in October and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I'd seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a «walking simulator» as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fell a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere made it one of 2024's standouts, a people's champion of indie horror for very good reason.
Mouthwashing is one of those games where, if you're recommending it to a friend, you go all, «No dude, don't look up anything about it, just play it, trust me, promise you'll play it? If Steam says you're playing Path of Exile instead I'll egg your house.» That makes it hard to review without spoiling, but I'll leave the full plot recap and analysis to one of those three-hour YouTube video essays and try to drill into what makes Mouthwashing special, spoiler-free.
The game begins with you playing as Captain Curly of the long haul delivery space ship Tulpar, purposefully setting the vessel on a collision course with an asteroid. After crash landing, the ship is compromised and flooded with emergency foam, sealing it against the vacuum of space. Curly is horrifically maimed and burned in the crash, leaving him unable to speak but still painfully aware of everything around him. The defining image of Mouthwashing is Curly's broken body laid out in the Tulpar's med bay, the ship's time of day/mood lighting screens glitched into an eternal sunset.
What is it? An utterly gruesome narrative horror game about the worst workplace in history.
Release date September 26, 2024
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