Mouthwashing (Wrong Organ) is a psychological horror game about a crew left stranded in space after their ship collides with an asteroid. The five person crew operates a long-haul transport ship, and are constantly reminded by the company’s mascot Polly to stay focused on work and to not linger to long in idle distractions. The isolation on the ship and the slim chance of being rescued reveals dark secrets and the crew’s hidden selves.
The game approaches the narrative as a puzzle, presenting scenes from two points of view — Curly, the captain, and Jimmy, his second in command — and arranges these fragmented scenes out of chronological order. This puzzle structure allows for an emotional escalation, building tension through mystery, rather than a straightforward progression of the plot. It also reflects a sense of workers being trapped in the flow of their lives, struggling to take responsibility for the mistakes they’ve made as the story cycles back on itself and grows increasingly surreal. I was particularly haunted by the Curly’s looming eye swirling in its socket, like the Tell-Tale Heart’s ever beating heart beneath the floorboards.
Most of the gameplay is in the walking sim style, with the player moving through the various rooms and interacting with people and objects. Slight puzzle mechanics involving collecting necessary items or revealing codes help to make the experience feel more interesting and diverse, as well as contributing to the escalation of the experience.
As events become more surreal, the gameplay shifts to include some additional gameplay mechanics, which did not work as well for me. For example, there’s maze in which the player must move silently as possible and a sequence involving having to shoot a person hunting you with an axe. These sequences tended to be more frustrating than frightening, since they were outside of the typical gameplay and didn’t feel like a natural extension of the experience. And because I’m terrible at keyboard and mouse controls, the gun sequence was essentially impossible for me. So, I had to skip it entirely in order to finish the game, essentially loosing a chunk of the story along with it. (Apparently, I was not the only one to struggle with this section.)
Despite these small struggles, I loved Mouthwashing. It’s tightly designed, and I really respect the way the developers leaned into the limitations to support the best experience they could with the tools they had.
Immortality (Sam Barlow / Half Mermaid Productions) is an FMV (full-motion video) game about Marissa Marcel, an actress who was all set to be famous and even filmed three major motion pictures — only to have none of those pictures ever be made public. The game consists of searching through short video clips from these unreleased movies, along with behind the scenes footage and TV interviews. The player can fast forward, rewind, and zoom in on people or objects to switch between and discover new clips.
When I first started playing, I felt a little lost jumping between the video clips, not really sure what I was doing, why I was doing it, or where the game was going. But this was definitely a “stick with it” situation, because just as I was feeling ready to put the game down, strange and unsettling things started happening in the game. Now, the more I play, the more deeper mysteries unveil themselves. And I am so fascinated to discover what’s really going on.
I finally returned to Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios) after some six months away. I needed the break after reaching the third act, because I was feeling rather burned out by the sheer size of the game and the choices involved. Now I’m ready to get back into things.
Upon returning to the game, I experienced only a few minutes of initial confusion (“what was I doing again?” and “wait, how I use these controls?”), but got back into the flow of things fairly quickly. My goals right now are to stay focused on companion quests, followed by the main quest — with the idea that I’m not going to talk to every single NPC in the game, like I usually would.
Nevertheless, I’m finding plenty of random quests that seem fun, and I just can’t help getting sidetracked, because there’s so much to discover. The exploration is fun and stumbling upon a chaotic new adventure is a blast — and I love meeting new NPCs. So, as much as I’m trying to streamline through to the end of the game, this is definitely going to take me a while.
When it comes to tiny games, I ended up playing a bunch of Bitsy experiences while looking through Anna Anthopy’s Itsy Bitsy Exercises, a series of lessons and inspirations for making short narrative games using the Bitsy tool. Here are some of the ones I loved (all under five or so minute to play):
- “The Space Slime” by Skyler Aure
- “muddy water ’round my shoes (homebound just once more)” by adam le doux
- “Junk Shop Telescope” by cephalopodunk
- “Mammoth Hunt” by Cooltendo
- “A Captain’s Lonely 60 Days” by Yellow Attic
- “Tea for Two” by Sean
- “the nightly routine” by miniwoolf
- “The Space Slime” by Skyler Aure
If you’d also like to know about the books and movies that I enjoyed recently, you can check out my Culture Consumption for August.