I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I’d seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a walking simulator as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fall a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere make it one of this winter’s standouts, a people’s champion of indie horror for very good reason.
The game begins with you playing as Captain Curly of the long haul delivery space ship Tulpar, purposefully setting the vessel on a collision course with an asteroid. After crash landing, the ship is compromised while Curly is horrifically maimed and burned in the crash, leaving him unable to speak but still painfully aware of everything around him.
Mouthwashing swaps between Curly’s perspective before the crash and first mate/acting captain Jimmy’s after. The Tulpar is an incredible environment, strangely homey before the crash despite the omnipresent motivational posters from Amazon-esque employer Pony Express. The Tulpar’s full of great clutter and character details to make it feel lived-in, and swapping between its pre- and post-crash states helps underline how drastically things are degrading in the present day.