Mouthwashing Review

ign.com:

My wife and I are expecting our first child soon, so I’ve spent the better part of a year reflecting on big concepts like leadership, responsibility, accountability, and trust. I’m considering who I am and how exactly I’m supposed to raise another human and not pass on all of my worst traits. It was in this emotionally raw state that Mouthwashing came along and punched me in the face.While mechanically simple – there’s not much to do besides talk to other characters, pick things up, and search the spaceship you are confined to – it tells its story in a way that couldn’t be done without the burden of interactivity, taking full advantage of what sets games apart from the likes of movies or TV. And I don’t use the word burden lightly, as that’s precisely how it felt to keep playing at times (in a good way). “Please don’t make me do this,” was often my prevailing thought, but uncovering the mysteries of how things got quite so bad on this ship always compelled me to continue.

The premise is straightforward: A group of people in a long-haul space freighter, the Tulpar, contend with the aftermath of a disaster, with your perspective bouncing around between several different times over the span of about a year. To go into more specifics about the story would spoil more about Mouthwashing than I am willing, as the surprise of picking apart what happened here and why is a driving force. But suffice to say, it wrings out as much dread, character exploration, and body horror as one conceivably could over the two-to-three-hour runtime.

The surreal tone all that takes is heightened by Mouthwashing’s PS1-esque visual style. Characters are recognizably human, but also just off enough to be dismissed as something else entirely. It’s a funhouse mirror, a twisted depiction used to express how we see people as tools in real life, and how easy it is to deny the humanity in someone staring straight at you. It’s a great choice, as hyper-realistic or more stylized graphics would have robbed