Mouthwashing

I cannot get Mouthwashing’s horrific imagery out of my head. The short horror adventure game is deliberately clunky to play, but its vibes are wonderfully rancid, and only grow more so as you learn more of its haunting mysteries.

I still find it hard to articulate my feelings on Mouthwashing as I sort through all the uncomfortable truths it unveils. I had a similar reaction to Mediterranea Inferno last year, which extrapolated very human experiences to their most extreme, terrifying conclusion. There’s something unnerving about seeing so many grounded emotions cranked up to the extreme as a group of people, trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation, desperately claw their way through the mess.

Mouthwashing’s marooned spacefarers left their homes as simple workers, trusting their lives to an uncaring corporation. When it becomes clear that they were nothing but numbers to a dying system, all they have left are the resentments built up in the spaceship’s hull. What follows is a terrifying expression of destructive, unchecked ego, worth playing by all but those too squeamish to see it through. — Kenneth Shepard