Let the bodies hit the floor.
When The Mortuary Assistant released on PC back in 2022, it was another indie horror game that was making the rounds on Twitch and Youtube. While many sat and watched their favorite content creators getting the life scared out of them, the title did remarkably well on Steam, generating nearly a million dollars in sales within the first month. It would then release on the Nintendo Switch in 2023 and finally has come to both PlayStation and Xbox consoles, even if the port clearly shows this game was really just designed for PC.
Within minutes of starting up The Mortuary Assistant: Definitive Edition, I could tell that this game was, and still is, designed for a mouse and keyboard. The menus, gameplay mechanics, and interactions are clumsy and unintuitive on a controller. While the game itself and what it offers is a tremendous success, playing The Mortuary Assistant on consoles simply takes what should be a masterclass in horror and makes it a clumsy and awkward experience.
Where numerous horror games have brought us to a mortuary before, it’s another experience altogether to have to work in one, especially when you discover the paranormal activities associated with said job. As Rebecca is trapped within the mortuary to shake off a demon that has been bound to her, she’ll need to explore three bodies to determine not just the demon’s name, but which body it has clung to. This can take around two hours to figure out, but only undertaking just one shift does this game a great disservice.
While Rebecca has been working at River Fields Mortuary for a few weeks now, her first shift alone is one spent engulfed in fear. Trapped and alone, with only a series of tape cassettes to guide her, you’ll have to use a series of equipment and tools to discover the demon and burn it in the incinerator. The game features six total endings of various outcomes, all dictated by your detective prowess to figure it out in time. Each ending is drastically different, some dictated by certain actions or truths discovered during your playthrough. There is even an ending should you simply just grab a body immediately and set it aflame. However, the game’s final ending is where the majority of answers will be explained as the ending is nearly as long as all the other endings combined. Honestly, if The Mortuary Assistant became a TV series or movie, it would be because of this ending.
Each shift starts the same way. You’ll have three bodies to embalm and four symbols to find hidden around River Fields. These symbols are how you'll decipher just who the demon is, similar in some ways to Phasmophobia, only a more condensed version of that. You’ll follow a checklist of tasks to prep the body and then return it to cold storage after the embalming has been conducted. From making incisions to connecting the tubes for removing the blood from the body, and jotting down notable markings across the body, these tasks use a series of items and equipment as you tend to each corpse on the gurney. Each night is a different selection of bodies, a new demon, and new scares.
The horror aspects of this game are where it excels. While the character models for Rebecca, her grandmother, and the owner of the mortuary, are absolutely low-end, the tone and aesthetics of the mortuary are what is going to attract people to this game. The Mortuary Assistant is impressively made by just one person, Brian Clarke, so the rough edges of its cast are something I can sort of look past, but I will state that in some lighting, you can see the mesh frame that makes up every model in the game, especially during the first cutscene. It’s a shame that during this Definitive Edition this was not addressed.
Still, the scare factor is what truly makes this game special. Each shift brings a randomness to its horror. From a black creature grappling the light fixture, the only jump scare to actually make me drop my controller, to a gollum-like creature that is crouched atop a shelving unit, there are dozens of scares that really take advantage of the environment and the tone. One of my personal favorites was turning around to see the body on the gurney disappear and then reappear at the end of the hall. The Mortuary Assistant does a fantastic job at using the idea of working in a mortuary and doubling down on the spooks. It knows the assignment and what it needs to focus on, even despite the noticeable blemishes.
What aids in these moments is that they tie back to Rebecca. As she has been marked, the demon relies on much of her past to haunt her. From her troubled past to her memories of her father, there is a lot to explore here for the character. It allows Rebecca to feel like she is an actual character and not just a set of arms designed to move the game forward. Having her be a vocal protagonist, allows us to understand her and what she has to go through to overcome this trial.
Now, while the variety of scares does change from shift to shift, the tasks you are doing do not. The first couple of times you'll likely rely on the clipboard to help you do your thing. Eventually, you'll be doing these objectives in your sleep. While many of these are simple, it is the controls and format here that suffer a lot. Entering info into the computer is a janky mess of moving your findings to the empty fields. Had there been a mouse cursor to maneuver with the analog stick, it would have been easier to enter the patient's name, age, and the reported marks on their body. Menus suffer from the same issues with having to sometimes press the x in the top corner or the typical use of the B button to back out simply not being there. The menus simply don't feel even remotely good to use with a controller.
The same can be said of the actual tasks. The controls never feel intuitive or built for the task. From injecting a solution into the abdomen or sewing the mouth shut, these tasks are wildly interesting and incredibly graphic but don't feel good to control. While they are over and done within less than a minute, these tasks are constantly those you'll repeat dozens of times should you invest in getting all of the game's endings. Thankfully, the scares do allow these moments to feel unique from shift to shift, allowing much of the repetition of the same tasks to not feel so similar.
While some of its components may not excel visually, easily making the solo-effort of a single dev very apparent, the audio; however, is phenomenal. Every whisper, scream, or spoken dialogue ranges from good to fantastic. Melissa Medina as Rebecca does a great job here, giving us a convincing performance that could have tanked the experience if played any other way. Apart from a few other roles within the game, I will say that Raymond, your boss at the mortuary, is about the only voice in the game where it didn't always feel like it fit well.
Mortuary Assistant may not give off a great first impression visually, but the aesthetics and horror elements shine. They take a series of mundane tasks and overlay a series of jumpscares and a mood that really feels extremely well executed, even if the control on consoles doesn’t quite impress. Rebecca's past colors a lot of the game’s best scares, and her desire to reveal the truth of River Fields makes for a compelling narrative highlighted by a strong performance of its lead. It’s janky, and extremely clunky, but it is a shining example of horror done right.
Developer - Darkstone Digital. Publisher - DreadXP. Released - 2022 (PC), 2023 (Switch), August 2nd, 2024 (PS), August 15th, 2024 (Xbox) Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (M) - Blood, Violence, Strong Language, Drug Reference. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.