Still, in 2024 here, I finally built up enough confidence to play a spooky game. I can play them; I just choose not to, and I am not scared. It’s gotta be more than just jump scares, and this week, it is far more than that.

This week is Mouthwashing.

Mouthwashing is a psychological horror game from Wrong Organ and Critical Reflex. The game was released on the PC in September 2024 and retails for $13.

I’ve seen this movie before, or at least imagined it. Mouthwashing is about the five-man crew of the Tulpar, a shipping freighter on a long haul. Curly, the Captain; Anya, the medical officer; Jimmy, the co-pilot; Swansea, the mechanic; and Daisuke, the intern. The crew is informed that this trip will be their last as they are being let go from Pony Express. Afterwards, the freighter crashes, Curly is extremely hurt and the crew must fend for themselves. That’s as much as I think I can say because any more talk may spoil integral sections of the story.

Mouthwashing’s narrative is grim, sadistic and nightmarish, invoking themes that may make some incredibly uncomfortable.

Mouthwashing is probably the best psychological horror game I have played in recent memory. The horrors in this game are subtle; they are in the conversations you have with the crew mates and the subtlest changes that appear in the room. In other moments, they are in the player’s face. Rooms warp, ever-gazing eyes, death, blood, and unimaginable horrors are presented to the player and amplified by the muffled PS1 graphics.

Even the effects in the transitions got me. Had me terrified, actually.

What Mouthwashing does well is character exploration. The characters and how they express their ideologies and feelings are akin to real people. There were moments when I was getting frustrated with how characters acted and reacted when talked to, and I stopped myself to reflect on the God-awful situation they were going through.

The gameplay is pretty standard for spooky games. Lots of walking, running, and interacting with people and objects having small brackets surrounding them. For puzzling, items can be picked up and stored for later use. Mouthwashing shifts perspectives and time so often that there were times when I was confused about who I was playing and what was happening in the story, but once I got the hang of how the game shifts, the gameplay, and narrative started to make sense.

Mouthwashing is more hinged on telling a good, spooky story rather than focusing solely on gameplay.

It is astonishing how well the PS1 graphics lend itself to the narrative. The darkness is darker, and the gruesome sections are more gruesome. Somehow, the crewmates look human, but there is always something off that feels like there is a sort of justification, narratively, for how both Curly and Jimmy treat them. The game is certainly colorful, and when situations worsen, the neon colors shed light on how the crew is losing it. Mouthwashing excels even more due to this design choice, and I feel that if the game had a hyper-realistic design, then it would not be able to take advantage of some of those aspects.

The audio design was so good that I took my earbuds out multiple times and took a step back. Then My wife came in, and I played the rest with the earbuds off, and the anxiety melted away. Some sections really had me terrified. As expected, the soundtrack nails the otherworldly/space theme while keeping the spooky factor by having sections that sound like nails on a chalkboard.

Mouthwashing would have 100% made my top ten of 2024 if I had played it when it came out. There is something about the narrative that kept me hanging on. The setting had enough to keep me interested almost immediately. The characters all feel so real. The conversations they had and how they reacted to their incredibly shitty situation kept me hanging on until the end, and when it was over, I continued to think about it. Mouthwashing hits the atmosphere perfectly, looks and plays great, and is the perfect length, clocking in at around two and a half hours.

Other than the perspective shifts giving me a headache, there is not a single bad thing to say about this fantastic video game.

9/10