Mouthwashing
After a crash leaves their spaceship heavily damaged, five crew members are left drifting through space. With dwindling supplies and rescue light-years away, Mouthwashing follows the events of the Tulpar as they unfold, leaving the shipwrecked survivors struggling to maintain order.
Harkening back to the days of PS1 horror titles, you might think Mouthwashing doesn't exactly sound like a horror title. And I agree with you. But it starts to make sense the further you get into the story. Inspired by the old and oft-forgotten horror games from the PS1 era, Mouthwashing is a first-person psychological horror game that will leave you questioning the events unfolding around you. With retro graphics and minimal voice acting, Mouthwashing hits you hard with its story nonetheless. Copious amounts of violence, gore, and an unsettling feeling of unease will keep you on your toes as you witness first-hand just what exactly being trapped in space can do to your psyche.
After colliding with an asteroid, the crew of the Tulpar, a freighter hauling a mysterious cargo for the Pony Express corporation, is left to fend for themselves while waiting for rescue. The crash leaves the ship's Captain Curly limbless and maimed beyond recognition. Unable to speak, Curly is left in the care of the remaining crew, who now must uncover what caused the incident while trying to come up with a plan to survive. Relationships between the survivors begin to fracture, exacerbated by the depleting supplies and having to care for their injured captain. With the looming reality of starvation ahead and rescue from their employers at Pony Express too far off, the survivors begin to take action. But isolation and claustrophobia are not a good combination. Paranoia quickly takes hold, and the group withdraws from each other more.
Mouthwashing balances the thrills of a psychological horror with a deeply artistic narrative, one that is loaded with thought-provoking and sometimes even downright jarring moments. It’s a story that has some familiar beats, with a wide variety of emotional and traumatic scenes that will test your mental resilience as much as your gore tolerance level. Descending into madness would be expected for a crew lost in space with nothing more than a few weeks of food and water to keep them going, but Mouthwashing is so much more than that. It’s a gripping and sometimes emotionally terrifying experience. It questions how people would react in a scenario when the structure of our everyday lives is ripped away at a moment’s notice.
I will admit that, while I was excited to give a new indie horror title a shot after my time with Look Outside, I wasn’t immediately gripped. I loved the artistic style reminiscent of horror games long since past, and I am a sucker for the whole “scenario goes wrong in space” media (thanks Event Horizon), which is another key factor in luring me into playing Mouthwashing, I was questioning my enjoyment early on. But it didn’t take long for the story to unfold.
The story is told in chapters, with the events unfolding in two different periods: before the crash and after the crash. Now, as the player, I got to see the story in a way the rest of the crew was oblivious to in the beginning. Avoiding spoilers, I did find it a little confusing at the start of the game when the actions I was making did not match what I would have expected, but I soon realized it was just the narrative. Mouthwashing was subverting my expectations as I played, and I quickly fell in line. Some scenes would end with a brief freeze effect as it transitions to the next chapter or scenario, and the first time I experienced it, I thought the game had crashed on me.
The healthy members of the crew, Jimmy, Anya, Swansea, and Daisuke, are deliberating their odds of survival. They’ve already implemented rationing and begin to discuss the cargo they are hauling for Pony Express, with the crew divided on the next steps they should take. Anya argues it could be useful to them, with Swansea refusing and saying the company will dock their pay if they tamper with their cargo. It was at that point that I took control of Jimmy, who assumed the role of acting Captain.
As the story progresses and the crew begins to distance themselves, I got to see how each member of the crew began to react to the traumatic events. Taking responsibility plays a significant role in the story, but it also highlights the burden placed upon each crew member as they confront isolation and the tasks they undertake to ensure survival. The loneliness of space and the weight of trying to unite a team nearing the end of their ropes begins to take its toll. The story carefully lays the groundwork of the slow descent into madness disguised as maintaining control of the crew, showcasing just how much things slip away when trying to keep order.
With time running out, the crew agrees to breach company protocol and open up the cargo hold in the hopes of finding food and medicine to keep them going. But the cargo they're hauling isn't what they were expecting. It's boxes and boxes of… mouthwash (I told you it would loop back into the title). The bottles of mouthwash have too high a sugar content to be used for medicinal purposes, but upon closer examination, it’s found to have 14% ethanol. Swansea, the Tulpar’s resident mechanic and recovered alcoholic, sees it as good a time as any to relapse, seeing as it seems unlikely he will live long enough to regret it.
While there is social commentary woven throughout, it is expertly crafted to fit the narrative to the point you’d be forgiven for not noticing it, instead getting caught up in the experience. There were plenty of times where I had to really stop and think about something that seemed initially obscure. The characters, their moments both on-screen and alluded to in other scenes, the slipping into darkness that you think you see coming. It’s lightened here and there by moments of levity, but Mouthwashing goes beyond showing a darker side of human nature. It practically holds the mirror up to your face and shows you how you can be the biggest part of the kinds of horrors the game presents.
Not every theme will be relatable to each player, but some are uncomfortable in how relatable they are: fear of loss, being held accountable for your actions, moral complexity. The writers behind Mouthwashing did an excellent job presenting dilemmas that made me question to what ends people would go to to survive or to avoid repercussions for their actions. It’s bleak, but it’s well-crafted. The sound design, the narrative, and the setting are all highlights, in my opinion. It took my expectations and surpassed them. By the end of the game, I was left reeling. The last few story beats solidify Mouthwashing as a must-play, but if you aren’t mentally prepared for a draining psychological horror that leaves you questioning the human mind, you may want to take it slow.
I played Mouthwashing exclusively on Steam Deck. It isn’t a demanding game, so I was able to fully enjoy my time with it without worrying about battery life. It’s also an easy game to pick up and play if you only have a few minutes throughout the day. It was completely bug-free for my playthrough. I had a little trouble with some of the game’s puzzles, but it was rewarding when I was able to figure out what to do next. Mouthwashing is thematic and well-written. While people might find the gameplay to be a little lacking, the story and setting more than make up for it. It doesn’t risk outstaying its welcome with a bloated or confusing plot, nor is it bogged down with unnecessary segments. Everything is crafted to give just the right amount of psycho thriller you’d expect (and some you wouldn’t) to make it memorable. Even writing up this article is giving me the urge to dive back in for another playthrough to focus on the story knowing the outcome. While the title might be a little out there for a horror game, Mouthwashing is bloody and disturbing in all the right ways, choosing to rely more on the horrors of isolation and human error rather than jump scares or a threat you can easily fend off. It’s the threats that you can’t fight that you need to watch out for. But until then, Have You Heard Of This?
Mouthwashing is available now on Steam for €12.79 or your regional equivalent, with a console release slated for sometime this year. It sits at a nice Overwhelmingly Positive rating from its players.
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