The Mortuary Assistant Review (PumpernickelChips)
For me, The Mortuary Assistant came out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me. Then it did it again, and it hasn't stopped yet. (minimal spoilers ahead)
I'm obsessed with horror games (especially survival-horror), and this game arrived when I felt like I was running out of old and new spooky games to play (even through emulators), reduced to digging through mysterious indie demos and Doom/Half-Life mods and such. I've become desensitized though playing so many of these games and I thought nothing could really terrify me anymore, much less surprise me. Terrifying moments aside, what I find most surprising is either the sheer replayability of this non-action horror game, or the fact that it was CREATED BY ONE (1) PERSON (not counting VAs, publishers, etc).
You can have a successful "shift," as runs through this game are called, on the first try in theory. You can even get each one of the endings in as many shifts. But the pressure and unpredictability never lets up. I'm 15-20 shifts in and while I can see certain spooky events coming now based on subtle signs, I'm still made very uneasy when the paranormal elephant in the room takes its time to show itself. I find the Resident Evil games very replayable, but even the least action-y of them lose their scare factor after the first run or two and become action roguelikes going for trophies. I've also replayed Outlast a few times, but The Mortuary Assistant still makes me feel as scared and defenseless as I did my first time playing that game.
The lack of action elements, even though the game isn't really a walking simulator, should make it boring on paper. On the contrary it's extremely engaging and makes you want to get better at the embalming procedure to spite the dark forces harrassing you. The actual terror you face as the protagonist can't be fought directly. All you can do is go through the motions of a mortician on the night shift, and hope you've correctly identified the source of the increasingly unpleasant hauntings that you'll have to try your best to ignore before it's too late. It hasn't gotten old for me yet.
The only evidence suggesting that this was developed solo is the somewhat disappointing variety of corpse models that randomly populate the morgue in threes on each shift, but I can tell this is being addressed gradually through updates. It's truly my only complaint about the game, period. The models that are there look great (for dead people, anyway), but it would be nice to see a wider range of body types and some new faces for the immersion. It makes me wonder if mods will ever be a thing for this game. There were only 5 or 6 different corpses when I started playing the game last month, and the Halloween update gave us three more. If there were closer to 20 models, I think this game would be just about perfect.
To the dev, thank you very much for this game. To anyone else reading it, buy it already!