I hesitate to even comment on this, i've tried to up my literature buffs a bit more these past couple of years, and the results can be quite disheartening y'know? it breathes fishily under your neck to cross a story your own two eyes aren't suitably tidy and keen for, drowsyness predating leisurly readings of dostoyevsky, ones with a whole brother karamazov seemingly misplaced attest to this, he could be anywhere, even Guatemala but not in my book's plot, he coin-opps himself in between the cushier sentence structures that mousey bastard.
Before such a task it helps to mull it over a lil nap, but honestly i still don't quite understand what 'how fish are made' and its katamarii helmed expansion really enunciate of mouthwashing's world, yet all the same enticed me to peel whatever layers i was able to. See i'm normally at odds with sci-fi, maybe the genre often falls under the wrong hands? i ascribe the fascination with futurism, the hackneyed speculatory, even sensational depiction of technology as the heaviest of creams amongst my woes, its not a bad flavor but i struggle to find more italo calvinos to rebalance my plate, more of the symbolically charged and metaphysical variety of sci-fi could really salvage any dish.
Mouthwashing; which is of the latter variety (honestly thank god) might disappoint audiences looking for something more like, idk dead space? you see horror you see a space ship the first initial thought is probably shooting guns in dark corridors, not mentally unwell blue collar workers drinking listerine because of its inordinately large alcoholic volume, its an image that swung at the back of my skull with the pleasant chime of the cartoon frying pan gag, *ah it speaks the language of extreme poverty*, a surreal little reveal that the draconian shipping company your skeleton crew is being mangled by, cut your lives out of their expenses like mass produced landfill in the grand scheme of things.
Up to this point the corridors of the freighter painted a picture of such grave, huge importance to whatever that shipment was, metric tons of weight and stress on the hull get lifted, in such an inelegant way, it would sooner pass as the premise of a magical realism story. so grim, so cruel, but it takes the buzz off, gives you a nicer smile i suppose.
I thought the game talked a lot of sunsetting, the way certain characters go are seen from a mile away, there's this air that tells you all of your coworkers have long decided what tree they'd rather be buried under than to continue living, in a way the different segments of the ship are like regions of a brain slowly losing function, they all represent some inability to fulfill their designated function, it can be so heartbreaking, its enough to leverage some amount of sympathy with every character, some worth vastly more than others, you'll see it in lots of different ways throughout the game, just a very lengthy unenthused bloodhound woof trying to resemble a goodbye.
Plotwise a lot of care is seemingly put into these very palpable struggles of adult life, the talks of resposibility and caring for others, of people really unable to do the right thing trying their damndest to prove to everyone they have a grip on life, as all their problems and misdoings quickly emulcify into a foam of misfortune thick enough to systematically break down all constituent parts of each and every facade set to defend the cargo, and any bit of reasurance left to be scrounged under the extinguishing sun.
Plenty to be delighted by, plenty more to be disturbed by also, and i think plenty of criticism to what the game presents, rhetorically, aesthetically, poetically even is just as valid. Much of it is vapid also but, i don't know if you've seen the brown bunny? a rightfully maligned movie, one that would have benefited from a couple more drafts of a script and less gratuitous imagery, i think this game is that hypothetical better version of the brown bunny that never existed, a bit weird and unpleasant, still a bit tasteless to go into further detail of, and grounded in reality enough that it remembers that the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up imagery it presents is transgressive and disapprobatory in nature, that it's the kind of art that doesn't just make you feel awful without some underlying justification, why the writers here chose to talk about the things they talk about, begins to make sense when you understand the role each character serves to the plot.
How i wish i could better condense and convey stories like these, but then again there's not much to touch on with gameplay or music; The game design, surprisingly is actually good. There's a clear love of programming poured into various sections of the game, ones that truly exemplify the good qualities of the walking sim genre that; one, i refuse to look at despectively and two, i just think doesn't get the credit it deserves at all. The interactive bits and pieces let you participate in an aesthetic experience, rather than diverting your concerns into the rivets of health and ammo and stamina management that don't necessarily fit or flatter, and y'know for something made in unity its even exciting to see some of the things the developers come up with, its not a mechanically poor experience, in fact it's quite creative, if a bit conservative with what it opts to present to you.
Musically i don't have much to report on, other than if you're a freak about ambient music then you might get some mileage out of a soundtrack that sounds like the inhaling and exhaling of a machine too old to be kept in operation, with alarming crackles and pops that draw parallels with the themes of the game, that unerving feeling that there's a capacitor corroding inside the machinery, peeling at the protective layers and severing continuity between semiconductors, is the sort of landscape that came to my mind when paying attention to the background noise.
I had a good unpleasant time with this, i hope to have plenty more, i hope that as you go through mouthwashing that you don't find very many things about it relatable, that you get to play it without spoilers attached but, at this point i'm afraid one of its central twists has reached "aerith dies" levels of notoriety. Most of all i hope you have someone in your life you can enjoy this with, i'm certain this is gonna be a bit of a bummer to keep in the back of my mind for the forseeable future :(
