Pause for a moment and think: How are video games supposed to make you feel? For most games, developers spend a lot of time making sure their players feel like nothing less than gods. They make you the ultimate hero, willing to sacrifice anything and go to any length to do what’s right. To protect those you love. To strive for the greater good. However, very rarely, we get a game that turns us into monsters. That forces us into roles so horrid it’s genuinely hard to play the game.
This is what Wrong Organ’s indie gem Mouthwashing (2024) is all about. The game opens with the player in the cockpit of the Tulpar, a long-haul space freighter manned by a crew of five: Curly the captain, Jimmy the co-pilot, Anya the nurse, Swansea the mechanic, and Daisuke, the young intern and resident ball of sunshine. The screen of the cockpit instructs us to divert the ship out of the path of an oncoming asteroid, however, the only action the player can take is to disengage the ship’s auto-pilot, leading to a collision with the asteroid.
Our very first act in this game is one of irrevocable violence, and tragically it might be the least of the sins we’re about to commit. If you haven’t played Mouthwashing, I highly encourage you to bookmark this page, take the two and a half hours it takes to complete the game, and then come back. Not only will you be supporting an amazing independent game studio, but Mouthwashing is one of the best narrative experiences 2024 had to offer and it would be a shame to have it ruined for yourself. With that out of the way, it’s time to press start. I hope this hurts.
I Hope This Hurts
Following the impact with the asteroid, things only get worse for the crew of the Tulpar. It’s revealed that Captain Curly has been horrifically mangled in the wreck, leaving him a broken shell of a man. With Jimmy now the captain of the ship, things quickly spiral out of control.
Mouthwashing’s narrative is non-linear, placing scenes from before and after the wreck right next to each other. This does wonders for not only keeping the player intrigued by the story, but also keeping them feeling disoriented and alienated.
One minute we’re seeing Jimmy give Curly pain medication, promising that he’ll get them both out of this mess. The next minute the game informs us it’s “Six Hours Until Judgement” and Swansea is chasing Jimmy down with an axe. It’s through this juxtaposition of the past and present that we learn that Jimmy isn’t quite the stand-up leader he’s claimed to be. He drugs his fellow crew members, drives them to insanity, and subtly manipulates them into their own deaths.
Eventually, it’s ultimately revealed that he was the one who disengaged the auto-pilot while letting the crew think it was Curly. Jimmy is a man so crushed by the weight of his own envy, guilt, and resentment that he can’t even recognize the damage he’s causing to himself and the people he promised to protect. Unfortunately, Jimmy is also the character we play as the most.
Nearly every horrible action Jimmy takes is one the player is forced to carry out themselves. No matter how much you’ve grown to love the crew of the Tulpar, no matter how much you want to scream that there’s a better way to handle things; if you want to progress the game you’ll have to become a monster. This is where the true horror of Mouthwashing takes hold.
Unlike a scary movie where you can be a bystander watching your screen in disgust, unable to do anything to impact the nightmare unfolding in front of you, video games don’t allow you the comfort of passivity. You’re forced to reckon with the knowledge that you’re the catalyst for all of this suffering. Maybe if you didn’t pick up the game, none of this would have had to happen. While most of the blame might fall on Jimmy’s shoulders, it’s hard to ignore the guilty feeling that part of this is your fault as well.
Taking Responsibility
Early into the game’s run-time, Anya tells Jimmy “I have to believe our worst moments don’t make us monsters”. As the crew of the Tulpar degenerates into desperate, wretched versions of themselves in the face of death, it’s easy to understand what she means by this. Despite the monsters they make of themselves, the player will find themselves sympathizing with the crew of the Tulpar and excusing away their most egregious acts. All of the crew except, of course, for Jimmy.
What is it about him that so deeply unsettles everyone who plays this game? What makes his sins different from every other character? Ultimately, it comes down to Mouthwashing’s main theme of responsibility.
Throughout Mouthwashing’s pre-crash scenes, we watch as Anya reveals to Curly that Jimmy got her pregnant. She later hides the ship’s only gun in fear of Jimmy using it against her when he finds out about her condition. Anya’s fears were not without merit, as learning about the pregnancy is ultimately the catalyst for Jimmy crashing the ship into the asteroid. At a glance, this storyline seems disjointed from the rest of the game’s plot.
However, in a seemingly unimportant conversation between Anya and Curly, she asks “Why do you think Pony Express put a lock on the medical room door but not in the sleeping quarters?”. This soul-crushing line of dialogue makes it evident that Jimmy assaulted Anya. When he crashes the Tulpar into an asteroid, it isn’t to get away from the responsibility of fatherhood, it’s partially to destroy all evidence of his horrific crime. One of the many unforgivable acts he just can’t take responsibility for.
While Jimmy might be the game’s most egregious villain, he’s far from the only one. Despite being the ship’s shining captain, swearing he’d do anything for his crew, Curly lets his friendship with Jimmy get in the way of protecting Anya. Despite knowing that Jimmy was harassing Anya, Curly fails to take actions that could have prevented her assault. In fact, he fails to do anything other than enable his friend and make excuses for him.
It isn’t until Curly realizes that Jimmy is willing to take the whole ship down that he finally understands how his own inaction is partially to blame for the Tulpar’s unfortunate fate. Although the crash may leave Curly a mangled, monstrous mess of his former self, it’s this ability to take responsibility for the pain he’s caused that keeps Curly from truly becoming the monster that Jimmy can’t help but be.
How Fish is Made
Wrong Organ looked at that state of the games industry and decided to defy how games are expected to make you feel. Instead they chose to hold up a cracked, dirty mirror to the player in hopes that it would make them feel something. In the hopes that it might hurt. To be honest, it still does. I first finished this game months ago, and trying to wrangle my feelings about it into something resembling a coherent thought has felt like a wound that won’t heal because you won’t stop picking at it.
No other game has ever made me feel like this, and that’s truly a shame. More developers should take a note from Wrong Organ’s book and make games that, for lack of a better phrase, aren’t fun. Gaming is one of the most immersive and personal forms of entertainment we have, and it would truly be a shame to waste that on superfluous feelings of power and strength when it could make us feel something more important.
If you’ve never experienced a game like this, I truly implore you to pick up Mouthwashing (or Wrong Organ’s other phenomenal game How Fish is Made) and give a chance to an indie developer who is doing what they can to redefine what gaming can mean.