The Mortuary Assistant

There has been a lot of simulation style games on the Switch to varying degrees of success. The Mortuary Assistant is effectively a mortician simulator game fused with a healthy dose of horror to spice things up; and I’d say that not only does it achieve success at making you feel like an expert embalmer, but is also far more terrifying than most horror games too

Many thanks to DreadXP for the review code

DEAD END JOB
After graduating from mortuary school, Rebecca takes on a job as a Mortuary Assistant at River Fields Mortuary. It has a bit of a questionable reputation, but she’s excited to get to work regardless. After a training session with the head mortician Raymond doesn’t go quite as well as expected, she’s pleasantly surprised when she gets a call from him saying that he’s going to take her and she should pop over that evening to work the night shift.

Except it’s a trap, of sorts. Your unfortunate training session set a demon’s sights on you, so Raymond is throwing you in at the deep end forcing you to learn how to deal with it. He locks you into the building and explains the situation: the demon haunting you will possess you by the end of the night unless you identify and banish it first. Despite assuming this is some kind of hazing prank, it doesn’t take too long for her to realise that this is for real. As such, she’ll need to keep a cool head and get down to work if she wants to survive. 

Whilst there is seemingly little more to the story than that over the game’s short length, it does a great job at world-building and really selling that all of this is real. Right from the warning screen before the game loads, advising you to be cautious of supernatural events happening whilst playing the game, it’s clear that this game wants you to get fully invested. Add to that the immense amount of lore surrounding demonology in the game and Rebecca’s troubled backstory with her father, there’s quite a fair amount to get into should you feel so inclined.

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT
During the night, Rebecca will have to embalm the three bodies that have been left for her in cold storage. They can be done in any order, but the process is essentially the same each time. After removing the body, she’ll first need to examine the corpse for any anomalies such as scars, moles, and the like, before logging the data on the computer and filing it away. This is when the real embalming begins.

It may seem quite overwhelming at first, but it’s actually quite a simple process as there’s a handy little checklist on your clipboard for you to refer to at any time. Starting off by threading the mouth shut, you’ll eventually start draining the body’s liquids, before filling them up with your own concoction. Each step requires different tools, although most tasks involve using an inventory item followed by some straightforward button/stick prompts. Equipment can either be large or small, with Rebecca only being able to carry one large item in addition to her clipboard. This can be a little bit of a hassle when it comes to mixing the various liquids together to create embalming fluid, but the added realism makes it less of an issue.

This inventory system does become a problem when it comes to managing the items you have. Some items are used automatically, whereas others require you to open the quick inventory menu with X. However, should you wish to use any special items or drop anything you picked up by mistake, you’re forced to open a different inventory menu just to be able to throw it on the floor. It’s a bit of a clunky system, and could probably have been streamlined a lot more to make it feel far more intuitive.

Once you’ve completed your checklist of duties, it’s time to return the body back into cold storage and pull out the next one to the entire process all over again. It would be quite a relaxing process if it wasn’t for the demon trying to piss you off.

And that’s where the real meat of the game comes into play. Over the course of the night, you’ll encounter hauntings by the demon who is trying to scare you. These may consist of figures moving out of sight, lights flickering, full on hallucinations, and more. They happen infrequently enough to not become tiresome, whilst also keeping you continually on your toes for the next thing that might occur. Will the corpse you’re embalming suddenly sit up? Will voices start calling to you? Events are randomised, so there’s always that element of surprise with what is going to happen next.

In order to free yourself from the demon, you’ll need to identify what demon is haunting you by obtaining its associated symbols and cross-referencing it with Raymond’s research. This will net you a mark that you can place on the corpse that the demon is inhabiting, which can then be incinerated to free you from its grasp. Finding the right dead body is usually pretty straightforward, but if you get anything wrong then you’re doomed and will fall to possession

It’s a really compelling setup and the game’s atmosphere is basically perfect. The macabre setting combined with the refrained approach to the hauntings make it rather an unsettling game. There’s no real gore here, other than the body horror involved with the embalming process, but the tone is so perfect that the game succeeds at being a masterpiece of unsettling terror.

If there’s any real criticism that I could direct towards the game, it’d be the amount of content available for the asking price. Sure, it’s a pretty well polished game that encourages future replays with its five possible endings, but that first playthrough will be where the real meat of the experience lies. As you work out how to embalm and banish the demon, it’ll probably take you around an hour and a half to see the first ending. My second shift, on the other hand, took a mere half an hour to get through. Sure, this is a game that I will personally jump back into multiple times whenever I fancy a quick scare, those who only want to play through once may find themselves feeling a little bit let down with the limited content available.

But they really shouldn’t. The randomisation of patients, demons, hauntings, and equipment location really does help make the game feel fresh when coming back to it, and the amount of polish and atmosphere alone makes it one of the most effective horror games that I’ve played in a while.

The Mortuary Assistant is very different to any horror game that I’ve ever played before, but it’s also one of the best. Taking a rather macabre profession and pumping it full of suspense makes me want to come back night after night for just one more shift.