Trigger warning: suicide, abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs
Spit out the lies, rinse off the guilt, and hope the aftertaste doesn’t linger. Mouthwashing drags you into a warped world where words twist, truth erodes, and every conversation feels like a trap. Can you cleanse your conscience, or will your words stain forever?
Mouthwashing, available on Steam, is a single-player, first-person, horror/adventure game. After a mysterious crash leaves a hauler ship’s crew stranded in space, trapped within the shuttle, their supplies start to dwindle. The game allows the player character, Jimmy, to engage in dialogue with the five crew members that he’s trapped with.
During a routine mouthwash shipment, the Pony Express freighter spaceship is sabotaged and crashes into an asteroid. Most of the ship’s resources are blocked off by airbag-like foam, which, if damaged further, could potentially breach the ship’s hull and trigger lethal decompression.
Curly, unable to speak or move after being severely mutilated by the crash, is kept sedated via a supply of painkillers. Jimmy declares himself acting captain as a result, and accuses Curly of causing the crash after going postal. Jimmy then realizes that he is not fit to be captain after a few days of taking the lead. And, because of that, he force feeds Curly his medicine violently since Anya, the medic, continually couldn’t bring herself to do so.
When food and medical supplies begin to run low after two months, the crew decides to open their confidential shipment, only to discover that it consists solely of mouthwash. Swansea, a recovered alcoholic, decides to break his sobriety by drinking the mouthwash for its alcohol content. His intoxication increases tensions further.
In my opinion, Mouthwashing is a great, high quality game with cool graphics and mechanics. The plot is well written and shown beautifully throughout the game. I enjoyed the part when Jimmy and Daisuke were trying to help Anya before she unfortunately committed suicide, I love how good it turned out. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoys playing adventurous horror games and is 16+ years old.
