Mouthwashing is a surreal horror gem about being lost and starving in space

A good horror game scares you in the moment, but a great horror game lingers in the back of your mind well past the end credits. We’ve been blessed in recent years with a plethora of excellent horror games, but with the arrival of October comes even more spooky games to get us nice and scared before Halloween. Mouthwashing immediately gripped me with its jarring, off-putting visuals, and kept me pinned under the weight of mounting dread. 

Mouthwashing is a three-hour narrative experience that takes place on the Tulpar, a Pony Express courier ship in the middle of a long-haul trip through space to deliver cargo. It’s your typical sci-fi capitalist dystopia; humanity trekking among the stars has not done anything to ease corporate control over workers’ lives. Despite this, the crew are a tight bunch: There’s the grumpy veteran Swansea, the anxious and avoidant nurse Anya, and the cheerful himbo Daisuke. Rounding out the crew are the co-pilots, Captain Curly and Jimmy. The game begins with a horrific crash, leaving the ship stranded and off course. 

The game jumps around on the timeline, showing us the crew’s dynamic before the crash, and the mounting despair after the disaster. Months after the crash, still lost in space, the crew is eager to find an alternate source of food as their supplies dwindle. The captain was badly burned in the crash, leaving him reliant on a dwindling supply of painkillers. No one is coming for them, they’re running low on supplies, and all they have in the cargo bay is crate after crate of mouthwash.

As Mouthwashing continues, reality begins to smear and falter. Sometimes, this happens diegetically; the Pony Express mascot begins to appear more often, with motivational posters papering the Tulpar’s halls. A crew member finds an old analog TV where one shouldn’t be, playing old company animations. Other times, these surreal transitions mimic the game crashing or a graphics glitch. A couple of times, I thought the game had crashed, only for the broken visuals to segue into a new scene.

There isn’t much in the way of combat or survival mechanics; instead, the narrative is a grim march toward an inevitable conclusion. An ax, once used to handle mundane emergencies, is used for a darker purpose. Anya becomes increasingly avoidant of her nursing duties, afraid to go near Curly in his burned and maimed state. Jimmy is cracking under the pressure. The only one who remains cheerful throughout is Daisuke, the absolute champion.

If this nightmare scenario has you even slightly intrigued, I heartily recommend checking out Mouthwashing on Steam or Itch.io. The game opens with a short message with the ship’s name, the delivery status, and an ominous note: “I hope this hurts.” It certainly did, and that’s why my mind is still stuck in far space on board the Tulpar.