Ever since Jacob Geller’s phenomenal video, “Gross Games about Flesh and Stuff,” I’ve been kept up with Wrong Organ, the developers of cult-hit How Fish is Made. And so, I noticed when How Fish is Made got a free expansion, titled “The Last One and Then Another,” Wrong Organ even got the chance to show their take on Katamari Damacy. And, of course, I also kept up with the announcement of their new, much-larger game, Mouthwashing, and plan to keep keeping up with Wrong Organ long after Mouthwashing releases on Steam on September 26th.
The Last One and Then Another
And it is during this expansion (which only takes about 15 minutes to play through, like How Fish is Made), that I was first introduced to the then-unnamed Captain Curly, a grossly scarred man with bandages across his entire body (and bloody, red flesh between the seams). One eye of this gargantuan character peeks through the bandages. His eyelids have been burned away, and so the orb simply stares, watching you. Below that, a mouth without lips or skin opens and closes uncomfortably. The man-thing speaks of spite. Self-loathing. Waste. And something… larger.
It’s an image that sticks with me, even a year on from the expansion. To be fair, a lot of How Fish is Made and The Last One and Then Another stick with me. The singing tongue-parasite, which consumed the tongue of a beleaguered fish, only to get a full musical number complete with horrifying images of dead fish. The various fish begging to eat or be eaten. The ultimate, meanful-because-its-meaningless choice of “Up or Down.” In half-an-hour, that’s a pretty high rate of philosophical cynicism and grotesque imagery. The people behind a game like that… They must harbor quite some demons.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I got the chance to meet Kai Moore, Wrong Organ’s producer, in a hotel suite off-site from PAX West 2024, only to find him to be about the most relaxed and “zen” individual I’ve ever met. Kai sat cross-legged, like a yogi, while I replayed the demo of Mouthwashing, and answered every question I had about it, Wrong Organ, and How Fish is Made with relaxation and poise.
On one hand, he seemed starkly at odds with the kind of games he helps make. On the other, maybe it takes people with that kind of serene calm to have the patience to deliver such artistically lush games like Wrong Organ does. And on the third, mutant hand, maybe Kai Moore is just the normal one on the team. Maybe, like what really happens when you go Up or Down, I’ll never know.
I will never forget this scene in How Fish is Made
But I do know that Kai Moore had a lot of insights on Mouthwashing. And, after all, what more could you want? What follows is my recollection of my time with Mouthwashing and my discussion with Kai Moore about it, and so any quotes should be taken as paraphrases of Kai’s actual statements.
Welcome to the Tulpar
Mouthwashing is a big step up in almost every way from How Fish is Made. Kai Moore described the game as “cinematic,” stating that it “borrows a lot from movies. And not just Alien. But also Event Horrizon, Sunshine. The Thing. Pandorum, maybe. Stuff like that.” And, with the demo, that is exactly what it felt like. Cinematic. Not because the graphics are impressive (unless you find PS2-era graphics impressive). Not because the sound design is out of this world, or the nonexistent voice acting and mocap is beyond belief. But because it follows in the footsteps of cinema.
Horror cinema, that is. The deeply psychological kind.
I expected Mouthwashing to be weird. How Fish is Made, after all, is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, and I’m someone who picks up at least 2 indie horror games on Itch.io every week. And so, when the first scene of the game is a psychological evaluation, I’m unphased. And when that fades through glitchy screen effects into a segment wandering in first-person through the dark, impossible hallways of a ship, seemingly pursued by a goofy corporate mascot, I remain more curious than frightened. For some reason, I’m not expecting overt scares.
“So,” I ask, having played through the demo already PAX. “Does this segment here take place in reality? Is the ship actually changing, or is this a dream?”
That’s the kind of question that producers, developers, PR people, and publishing managers alike have a routine answer for. Usually something about needing to figure it out for myself. Kai Moore, instead, surprises me. “Yeah, it’s a dream.”
I look at him, my character walking as I do, perplexed. Before I can ask my follow-up though, I jump and gasp, my eyes pulled back toward the screen as the statue-like Polly the Pack Mule appears behind me in a dark hallway, trapping me. The screen fades to white. Kai smiles, and I sheepishly respond: “I fell for that twice. Did the same thing when I played the demo the first time.”
Kai chuckles. In truth, the jump scare isn’t that scary. I’d laugh in his position, too. But it was unsettling enough to warrant my cowardice. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
While I’m telling myself I’m not a chicken, Kai continues his earlier point. “Yeah, that was a dream. It’s Captain Curly’s perspective” — something I hadn’t picked up on the first time I played — “right before and during the crash. It’s what he’s going through, in a manner of speaking. We don’t want to do an Inception — that is, we don’t want the player to be confused about what is reality and what is a dream. We’d rather they know when they are playing through something that is unreal, because that’s where Johanna [Kasurinen, the Narrative Director of the studio] wants you to be thinking about what is being said. What is being felt.
“That’s not to say you’ll always know,” he concludes. “And there isn’t always as much of a difference between reality and unreality as the characters might like. But, in general, we want players to go in knowing that we are playing with abstract ideas, the kind of things that only exist in dreams.”
After the Crash
As Kai delivers his remarkable statements (as best as I remember them, anyway. And what are memories but personal realities?), I go on autopilot for a bit. Characters are introduced, and I’m now playing as someone entirely different. I’m told via text that it is “2 Months After Crash.” My character and 3 others are huddled around a table in what appears to be a dining area or recreation room (or both, since that would save money). Swansea, Anya, Daisuke, and the player character Jimmy are debating whether to open the cargo hold to look for food, medicine, and other essentially they can use to survive.
I ask Kai some more technical questions. “How long will the game be?”
“About two and a half hours. Just one ending; the replayability is about following the story through and noticing things you didn’t the first time. Like a movie,” he says, reaffirming that earlier point.
When I come across Captain Curly, just as grotesque and mangled (though much smaller) than he was in The Last One and Then Another, I ask, “So, this is probably a silly question, but is there any connection between this and How Fish is Made, or the expansion?”
Kai shrugs. “Nah, not really.” His nonchalant attitude and perpetual state of calm are now almost unnerving (sorry Kai), given the subject matter. “I mean, there are thematic connections between The Last One and Then Another and Mouthwashing, but there won’t be any fish hopping around the Tulpar.” He says this as I pry open Curly’s voiceless mouth and pour painkillers down his gullet — and action which looks like it causes more pain than it relieves.
I grimace, but move on. “I was wondering about that, actually,” I say. “The ship is called the Tulpar. Keeping with the Alien tradition, you introduced it by stating it was long-haul space freighter with a crew of 5. Now, two questions: firstly, is there a monster on the ship, like in Alien? And secondly… Why Tulpar?”
“I can’t tell you and I don’t know.” A refreshingly honest answer. But, as I’m beginning to learn is Kai’s style, then he elaborates. “I can’t tell you if there is a monster, not only because it would be a spoiler, but also because… What is a monster? Is Curly a monster, for crashing the ship? Is what we see in dreams monsterous? Are you?”
Ah, yeah. Now I’m beginning to understand how Kai Moore had a hand in How Fish is Made.
But as he says this, I realize that I’ve glossed over a plot point in my previous demo playthrough. “Wait,” I say. “Captain Curly crashed the ship.”
Kai looks at me like he is really trying to hold back pointing out how obvious that is. Instead, he replies with a characteristically kind voice. “Yeah, he did. He crashed it hoping to kill everyone aboard and destroy everything. Instead, though, everyone aboard was cursed to live, and forced to think about what happened to them. Probably for the rest of their lives.”
“But… Why? Why would Curly want to kill himself and everyone else to begin with?”
Dragonsbreath X Mouthwash
I ask this question right as I finally make my way into the cargo storage area of the Tulpar. And Kai, knowing I’ve played the demo before, just gestures at the screen. He doesn’t need to answer with words what will soon be answered in-game. A television sits in the middle of the room, playing a variety of cartoons, static, odd images, dancing skeletons and, importantly, a commercial for Dragonbreath X Mouthwash.
“Ah,” I say, putting it all together. “Captain Curly tried to crash the ship and kill everyone because of… Mouthwash.”
“Exactly,” Kai affirms. “There’s more, but that’s a good way to put it.”
The next scene all but proves my point. The 4 uninjured crewmembers stand around an open box of mouthwash. All of the boxes in the cargo hold are just open boxes of mouthwash. Every single one. A year-long journey — the last of many for Captain Curly — all just to bring some sugar-filled mouthwash somewhere else in space. Nothing else. Nothing more.
I’m reminded of Captain Curly’s role in The Last One and Then Another. Where he describes working for years and year, just to waste his time. Desperation. Mundanity. Insanity. It’s all… pointless. It’s nothing. At best, it might help line the pockets of the long-haul company and some hygienic-company tycoons. Money they can only earn off the hard labor of people like Curly, and Jimmy, and Saisuke.
I’m just playing a demo, and already Mouthwashing saying more than a lot of horror games with three-hundred times its budget manage to say.
In the final segment — a dream segment, certainly, since Captain Curly can talk — Curly asks Jimmy to find a knife to help him cut a cake. Before that, he tells the player that they might as well eat it, even though it is subpar. Take back some control, since life seems to just meander anyway. This all coming from the dream-state version of the semi-comatose, non-verbal, heavily injured Captain Curly.
“How do you think of stuff like this? What’s Wrong Organ’s process?” I ask Kai Moore. Surreal games are one thing, but this? This is another, and I couldn’t agree more with Kai’s ‘Cinematic’ label, which applies better to Mouthwashing than most AAA games that try to use it.
Kai shrugs. “We just say things we want to say. Explore what we want to explore. And hope that helps us never end up on a ship transporting nothing but mouthwash across the galaxy forever.”
I return to Captain Curly in the game, axe in-hand and ready to chop the cake. Although now, instead of cake, Captain Curly is lying across the table. I guess he’s the cake. Maybe it’s metaphorical. I’m too busy thinking about what Kai just said to process it much. I just raise my axe, and chop down. The screen cuts to black.
As I take a second to think, and think of all the time I spend just writing guides and writing articles and writing out interviews like these, I think of mouthwash.
And then I think about how deeply I want to see where this story goes. What it has to say. Whether I’ll still think of mouthwash forever. I’ll certainly be playing through Mouthwashing on day one when it releases on September 26th on Steam. Because if its demo and Kai’s words are anything to go on, it has a good chance of being an artistically inclined gamer’s favorite horror title this year.
Thanks again to Kai Moore for sitting down and letting me chat about Mouthwashing, I couldn’t look forward to it more.
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Graves
Graves is an avid writer, web designer, and gamer, with more ideas than he could hope to achieve in a lifetime. But, armed with a mug of coffee and an overactive imagination, he'll try. When he isn't working on a creative project, he is painting miniatures, reading cheesy sci-fi novels, or making music.
