Right here we’re, the ultimate voyage of 2024. That is the final introduction calendar entry of PC gaming web site Rock Paper Shotgun. Days elapsed: 24. Writers employed: 8.
I hope this hurts.
It is brief and unsettling sci-fi horror recreation Mouthwashing.
Brendy: At the start of Mouthwashing, you click on buttons within the cockpit of a spacecraft and deliberately steer it on a horrible collision course. Every part that occurs afterwards to the 5 crew members aboard this long-haul cargo ship is your fault. It is a brief recreation, solely 2-3 hours of strolling round spaceship corridors and chatting to the varied misfortunates who’ve survived the crash. A troubled medical officer, a disgruntled engineer, a naive intern. The meals is operating out and everybody is consistently bickering. None of this can finish nicely.
However at the least there’s a cargo maintain filled with mouthwash! The jolly promoting that punctuates the sport provides plenty of darkish humor to what’s, finally, a really grim house story about complacency, entitlement, and resentment. As some members of the crew get drunk on the alcohol-high content material of the menthol mouth cleanser, others attempt merely to return to phrases with the heinous occasions which have unfolded. And, because it seems, a few of these occasions occurred earlier than the ship even crashed.
That is one neat trick of the sport. It flips forwards and backwards in time, pre-crash and post-crash, filling in particulars of the crew’s relationships and their lives. Earlier than the crash, the captain (your character) appears below stress, however finally optimistic. It is arduous to see why he would crash the ship on goal. After the crash, you play as co-pilot Jimmy, who now has to maintain the crew alive.
That features feeding the injured and incapacitated captain his painkillers. As a result of, ah, the captain was within the cockpit in the course of the impression and is now lacking all his limbs. He’s burned past recognition and lined in bandages – his monocular face the hanging visible mascot of the complete recreation. If there’s one factor that persistently unsettles me about life aboard the Tulpar (and there is not only one factor) it is the groans and sobs of the captain as he lies there unable even to talk.
I do not need to spoil any extra of the story. I’ve executed that already in an enormous publish in regards to the characters. However for those who worth good storytelling and dialogue in video games (and for those who do not thoughts just a few conventional psychological horror recreation sequences of operating from a monster made manifest by your personal sense of disgrace) then you must put apart your vacation cheer for a bit dithered dread. Look, I am going to assist, do not sweat it. Go on, play the sport and don’t fret in regards to the turkey or the pudding or the household or your folks. By no means thoughts all that.
I am going to care for it.
Ed: I like the concept that all through this horrifying story, there is just one assure: everybody on board has minty recent breath. Each waft of mouth air? Just like the scent of a neighborhood Subway, if Subway changed their southwest chipotle sauce with Colgate Whole, and their hearty italian bread with some footlong artificial fibers.
Nic: Seems, the precise Silent Hill 2 remake was solely the second finest torchbearer for Silent Hill 2’s legacy this yr. That’s all I’ll say!
Head again to the arrival calendar to open one other door!
