There’s something to be said about the world we live in, where everything is one extreme or another. Take YouTube as an example; plonk a couple of keywords into the search bar like “horror” and “video games,” you’ll be met with a plethora of photoshopped thumbnails showing shocked faces against a title like “Top 10 reasons why Pokémon is the scariest franchise in the world.” It stands to reason, then, when I saw hundreds of videos (complete with silly thumbnails) about The Mortuary Assistant being one of the most horrific games ever created, I was sceptical. Not least because the premise has you embalming dead bodies in a creaky morgue. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, everything can go wrong. The Mortuary Assistant introduces you to Rebecca, a young woman looking to get her life back on track after a hard life of drugs, depression and the loss of someone close to her. After going back to school and studying to become a certified embalmer, she landed her first job at River Fields Mortuary. The introduction is short and to the point, just giving us the crib notes before things get weird. Rebecca’s first day at the mortuary acts as the game’s tutorial, introducing us to the methodical nature of the first-person point-and-click adventure. Guided by the totally-normal-and-not-shifty boss, Raymond, we’re taken through the various steps of embalming a body.
Each step is logical in its approach; examine the body, staple the mouth and eyes shut, drain the blood before pumping the cadaver full of embalming liquid and wiping the face. There’s a clipboard to help remember each step, but as you can tell by me reeling this off, it quickly became second nature. It did make me think that if I could get over all the death and stuff, I’d be amazing at embalming. At the very least, I’d probably have no complaints.
As Rebecca’s induction progresses, strange things start to happen. I’m not going to ruin it, but it’s the first of many jumpscares that The Mortuary Assistant throws at you. DarkStone Digital does a really good job at building up the tension and executing it perfectly. Likewise, in the aftermath, Raymond manages to convince Rebecca that what happened was all in her head. I was screaming at the TV, telling her not to go back, but as is often the case, she was never going to listen to me.
When we arrive for her first proper shift at the mortuary, it’s revealed that River Fields is cursed, and one of the demons has attached itself to Rebecca and is slowly possessing her. To stop a demonic entity claiming her soul, we have to work through the night, about 45 minutes in real time, and find both the name of the demon and the body it’s hiding in, and burn the cadaver. The trouble is, the demon doesn’t want to be found and will do everything in its power to throw you off the scent. Over the course of a shift, you’ll have to employ your powers of deduction while simultaneously carrying out your day-to-day embalming duties. This left me thinking it was a regular day at work, where my manager loads on extra responsibilities without the pay to go with it – a much scarier prospect than some demons.
Finding and identifying the right boogyman does take some time, and is randomised for each playthrough. Each shift will have a different ‘tell’ to find, be it a hand slightly twitching, or a wound that moves from an arm to the face. On one occasion, the body just got up and walked away, but most of the time, I had to have my wits about me, looking for any slight change in the body. In the beginning, this was frustrating, as other demons would constantly interrupt to throw me off the scent, but as I recognised more of the story beats, things did get significantly easier.
Getting the right result will progress the story, leading you to hunt down some of the game’s multiple endings. I rather enjoyed having to replay nights over and over to see what different things would appear and how the story would unfold. As time wore on, the main story beats became more predictable, occurring at specific stages of the embalming process. Secondary hauntings from other spirits, however, kept me guessing throughout. These distractions are put in place to throw you off course, along with scaring the bejesus out of you.
A particularly gnarly all-black spirit that I nicknamed “Soot-lad” creeped me out the most. Appearing on the ceiling, bearing pearly white teeth, it wouldn’t move. It would be a Mexican standoff until I twitched first. Most of the time, the creature would scurry back into the nearest shadows in a frightful, dislocated movement like something out of The Exorcist. Sometimes, he was a bit braver. And sometimes, it wouldn’t run back into the shadows at all. Oh no, sometimes, it would lunge forward…
Being attacked by demons in a dimly lit mortuary might not sound like the most appealing premise for the game, but The Mortuary Assistant has a few tricks up its sleeve to help. Scattered through the building are prompts to help identify the demon’s name and which body it has possessed. I enjoyed that the items only pointed me in the right direction, rather than fully holding my hand each time. It allowed me to engage my grey matter and work out the logical outcome. Those wanting to experience the story without additional hauntings could also turn off the secondary encounters. While this made for a quieter shift, in my experience, it actually made the game harder, as some giveaway encounters (like arms twitching) didn’t happen.
I found the more I played The Mortuary Assistant, the less unsettling things became. By the end of my eighth shift, I’d seen everything there is to see. Yes, the hauntings persisted in their random approach, but there’s only so many things you can do with a three-roomed building. This isn’t helped by the graphics, which in horror movie terms could be classed as B-movie style.
That’s not to say they are bad, but if you looked too closely, you’d definitely see where things were stitched together. The demons looked passable for something that would flash across the screen, but the cadavers felt a bit ropey. For the most part, the game runs fine, although it did crash once when trying to ignite the burner. Interestingly, this caused my shift to glitch, and when I reloaded back into my shift, I found that I was about to burn the wrong body as all three bodies were marked.
Despite the graphical shortcomings and the game ultimately becoming as predictable as a regular 9-5, The Mortuary Assistant offers a lot of fun. The story does plunge into a typical horror trope, but it is executed brilliantly. The randomly generated spooks are where the game shines, as you never know where the next scare is coming from. But like any job, the longer you spend inside the mortuary, the more the novelty wears off. In the space of 10 hours, I went from someone scared to pick up the controller to a jaded employee swearing at the various spirits as they’d moved my embalming stuff around the room for the 100th time.
Thanks for taking the time to read our review, If you’d like to support us further, please consider buying us a coffee!
