Game Review: Mouthwashing (2024)
(this review contains minor spoilers.)
I picked up Mouthwashing based on vibe, hype, and the positively glowing community reviews. This should be the type of game I love: it’s a tight narrative with touches of humor and dark elements that veer into surrealist aesthetics and non-linear storytelling, basically hitting most of the things I’m susceptible to as a critic. It’s occasionally clever, and seems to consciously defy easy summation beyond listing its main story beats. Surely, disappointment cannot come my way, right?
Right out the gate, I love the opening. The spaceship is facing down a collision, and you’re advised to correct course, but your only option is to steer into a nearby celestial body (I was never quite clear if it’s a planet, moon, or something else…hardly matters). After this, the autopilot warns you that it will engage to correct–and that the crews’ pay will be docked for the screw up–but your only path forward as a player is to take the captain’s key and override the autopilot. You are the saboteur, doing everything against your instincts, left only to wonder why as the scene fade to black.
That’s a hell of a start, and brilliantly sets up a bunch of questions that the player will slowly uncover over the course of the two-or-three-hour game. Who was the perspective character in the opening scene? Why did they crash the ship? What, if anything, does mouthwash have to do with it all? I don’t normally launch inane questions at the start of my reviews, but this game actually made me ask them as a player, so it’s the most appropriate illustration.
Clearly, the bar was high from the outset: primed by glowing reviews and an impactful opening scene, I was ready to go where the game wanted to send me.
I’m Taking Responsibility
One of the strongest elements of Mouthwashing is the way it chooses to tell the story. While you begin with the pivotal crash event and immediate aftermath for the now-stranded crew, you subsequently jump back and forth in the timeline, each chapter slowly revealing what led to the crash, what followed it, and the social ecology of the five crew members. Most chapters are told from the perspective of Curly, the ship’s famed captain, or Jimmy, his co-pilot and navigator, but you learn far more about each in the parts of the story that are told from another’s perspective. Also onboard is Swansea, the sober, surly, veteran maintenance engineer; his wet-behind-the-ears but earnest intern, Daisuke; and Anya, the demure, troubled nurse who nonetheless tries to make the most of her challenging situation.
For such a short game, I found all of these characters impressively well-developed, with nuanced, complicated, often dark relationships between them. While I’m not going to say we get to know them in deep or meaningful ways, character work in Mouthwashing is one of its greatest strengths, and there’s significantly more to notice on a second playthrough when we’re forearmed with the revelations that come in the latter half of the story.
The pacing at which the story unfolds is solid, taking a moment to get rolling before making a dark turn as both the ship and its crew start to degrade. Make no mistake: this is a heavy story, the emotional arc and plot palette tracking far closer to Event Horizon than Firefly. This crew is doomed by their own devices–and as we learn–likely was long before the crash.
God Is Not Watching
The tone of Mouthwashing is delightfully complex. There are muted elements of absurdism that provide a nice foil for the darker elements without disrupting or undermining them. The story unfolds with vague menace, and as you learn about the crewmembers and their various personalities, shortcomings, and weaknesses, there’s always a sense that there’s something slowly coming to a boil under the surface.
As short as the narrative is, it’s meticulously crafted. I noticed a lot of little details that foreshadow or expand on things that happen earlier or later in the narrative. For instance, looking at the cafeteria menu in some latter-timeline chapters, we see ingredients crossed out and replaced with potentially dangerous alternatives, and the details of why this came to pass are eventually revealed. Other examples aren't so overt, or have to be inferred, but it really shows exemplary attention to narrative detail on the part of the developer.
Finally, when the game does get down to being horrific, it really works, and all the more so because you don’t see many hints of how dark it’s going to get at the outset. It flirts with themes of madness and maliciousness more eloquently than most games manage. Despite the retro graphics and simple mechanics, Mouthwashing does an impressive job of visually conveying tactile and immersive horror.
Our Worst Moments?
So, there’s a lot of great things to be said about Mouthwashing, but I do feel much of the hype and appreciation is a touch overstated, and that this is possibly a result of younger gamers being less exposed to this narrative style and these specific themes. Regrettably, I’m an overeducated Elder Millennial, well-versed in the works of Stanley Kubrik, David Fincher, Werner Herzog, Nicholas Winding Refn, etc. and the brand of vaguely nihilistic cynicism that is the soul of Mouthwashing isn’t something novel to me. The game does a solid job of exploring/showcasing these themes, and it includes a solid skewering of consummate corporatism to boot, but it’s hardly the crowning exploration of the topics many (younger?) gamers believe.
Is that fair? Am I judging the game, or its followers? It certainly sounds like the latter…
Coming out the other side, I don’t quite know if I meaningfully connected with Mouthwashing on a cognitive or reflective level. It’s quality, but I feel like I have so few intersections to affect anything around me, and while I’m spending more and more time with the characters, they’re trauma feels a touch pantomime to me. In the end, it’s a well-told but ultimately too-familiar short story about an overworked and exploited space crew coming apart at the seams.
It’s not a bad game, but I’m struggling to come up with a single thesis about what it does exceptionally well or better than other properties in this thematic space. It plays for emotional resonance, but undermines itself by being so cynical; it made me think, but gave me no thoughts that begat conviction. I ultimately consider Mouthwashing to be a well-crafted and interesting narrative, but also want it to be a herald to something greater from developer Wrong Organ.
I think much of my muted disappointment comes from the final act, which is almost entirely a series of visual setpieces that look great but don’t quite hang together in a convincingly believable way. Yes, you can make vague thematic ties between horses and ultrasounds and story beats, but it feels damn thin. The game creates a lot of totems and expects the player to assign meaning to them. If you don’t, it rings hollow.
Looking at the developer, I think there is some major narrative talent on display, and great creative instincts, but the storyteller needs an editor to direct the surplus of creative energy in this title to a more coherent endpoint.
Final Thoughts
Mouthwashing is a memorable tale of madness that starts as a slowburn space crew story before catching fire and being kicked into one of the upper rings of Hell. It’s not always the most engaging narrative, but it’s effective when it needs to be, offering stylish, macabre horror in an affecting voice. However, I don’t know it’s saying enough to warrant its indulgences: by the last act, it’s more arthouse film than anything–and while stylish, bombastic, and honestly cool–does it mean anything? I think players will settle on a multitude of answers.
Score: 7.6
Strengths
Bold, impactful story
Impossible to be indifferent to
Strong narrative elements
Weaknesses
Thematic explorations feel slightly shallow
Lots of sound and fury, particularly in the final act
Mouthwashing is available on Steam.
You might also like: IMMORTALITY, Dear Esther, SOMA
