A mutilated man stares at you, his single piercing eye following as you move around the room. His filthy bandages hide a ruined face, raw lips circling disturbingly perfect teeth, and his moans echo through the halls. But that eye: it knows something you don't. At least not yet.

Developed by Wrong Organ, Mouthwashing rightly earned a lot of praise when it was released in 2024; it's an extraordinary first-person horror adventure game placing you among the five-strong crew of the Tulpar, a commercial space freighter part-way through its year-long mission to carry its unknown cargo across the stars. Moments into its dramatic opening scene - "0 days before the crash", we're told mere moments in - things go dramatically awry, establishing a dire tone and a baseline of dread that only builds from there.

Mouthwashing isn't a game laden with jumpscares; instead it is a masterfully crafted discomfort simulator, conjuring unease through its claustrophobic environmental design, strong audio work, disorientating structure and pacing, and a lo-fi visual style that creates spaces for your imagination to fill.

Slowly, for instance, the Tulpar's already gloomy corridors constrict, shrunk by the crew's increasingly desperate use of repair foam; this continuous degradation of the space around you mirroring the minds of its characters, as circumstances grow increasingly dire. For as enjoyable as Mouthwashing's light puzzling is, you're really here for its unexpectedly impactful story.

This is an intelligent game that trusts its audience, and that's most obvious in its breathless, non-chronological narrative. It's a story that doesn't stay still, that offers no moment to breathe.

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