A Mortician's Tale

A Mortician's Tale doesn't feel like a game.  It looks like a game but you have very, very few choices and you can't fail, so it plays more like a workplace training exercise.  Have you done those?  We used to do those in labs.  The 'game' tells you which piece of equipment to pick up and where to use it, and won't let you do it wrong, it'll just keep reminding you as you click around.  It will also explain what you're doing and why, in a way most games leave up to you to figure out.

There are screenshots from the game below, including a representation of a human body being prepared for burial.

Basically, you take the role of a mortician, that is, one who prepares the dead for burial or processes their cremation.  You pop in on her career for a day at a time, over a few months.  During that period her workplace changes a few times, allowing you to see different aspects of the funeral industry.  Each day begins by checking your emails, which will tell you who you're preparing and how - e.g., for an open casket, for cremation - and gives you a bit of gossip.  On most days, your mortician will also have another webpage up that you can read.  On one day, that other webpage lets you play Minesweeper, but with a twist.  The twist is that the numbers are replaced with symbols and which symbol corresponds to which number changes on each attempt.  I didn't find it at all difficult.  If you manage to click on an empty square and so reveal several at once, it's pretty easy to see which are the 1s, and then you can work out the 2s and 3s and so on from there.  That said, I'm really, really good at Minesweeper - I'm currently playing Minesweeper 3D because normal Minesweeper doesn't challenge me any more and no one will play me at Minesweeper Flags because I keep winning - so my experience isn't typical.  Still, it's not an essential part of the game (though it does give you an achievement).

The game then has you prepare the body.  This involves some combination of cleaning them, fitting caps under their eyelids and gluing the lids shut, sewing the mouth shut, replacing their blood with formaldehyde, and suctioning out their liquefied organs.  The game isn't exactly gory, and all of the above just involves clicking and dragging the mouse, but it is discomforting.  I can see it being weirdly cathartic if you're recently bereaved - though it could also be incredibly upsetting in those circumstances - and it did help me figure out what I want done when I die.  Incidentally, I'm currently completing a Master degree in bioarchaeology - skeletons - and I still find that corpses make me uncomfortable, even fictitious ones.  I'm okay with bones - I've handled medieval skeletons - but I don't like fleshy bits.

Having prepared the body, you attend the funeral or wake, where you can speak - or eavesdrop - on the guests and pay your final respects to the remains.  Having done so, you re-enter your workspace and the next day begins.  Your only choices within the game are who to speak to - with an achievement for speaking to every guest - and whether or not to prepare the body of someone who has committed suicide.  I went with yes, because we are all equal in death and because I don't think suicide is a personal moral failing.  It's sad, and we, as a society, should take steps to make sure it isn't necessary, but the individual hasn't, in my opinion, committed a sin (I'm using 'sin' to mean a bad, immoral thing, not literally in terms of what the Catholic church has decided is a sin.  I am Catholic, I'm just not very good at it).  I've also realised that I believe having your body treated respectfully after death is a human right, no matter what someone has done.  It's a bit like the way our legal system (British, for me) has decided that everyone deserves a lawyer to argue for them, no matter what they've done or how obvious their guilt appears.  Someone has to be on your side, no matter what.  Because, I don't know, maybe this is the one in a billion time when an innocent person is unlucky enough to look really guilty, or when there are circumstances that should change the normal sentence for their crime.  I don't know.  I can't make that decision, no one can, that's why we have a whole system to decide that sort of thing, with lots of people coming together to discuss it and examine it and find the truth.  The whole issue is above my - and most people's - paygrade, and so is deciding that someone has committed a sin by committing suicide.

With the steps for preparing the body are so thorough and grounded in realism, messing up would be very upsetting, so it makes sense that the game doesn't actually let you fail.  But, this hand-holding does make it less of a game, and that's one of the reasons that the Steam reviews are 'mixed'.  The short playtime compared to the price tag is the other major reason for negative reviews.  I completed the game, with all achievements, in 90 minutes.  The description says it normally takes an hour, so I assume that extra thirty minutes came from minesweeper and intentionally moving slowly because it felt like the respectful thing to do.  I got it on sale for £1.79 - which will be the price until the 24th of June 2021 - but the normal price is £7.19.  I'd say my enjoyment of those 90 minutes was closer to £1.79 than £7.19.  I had a good experience, but I probably would feel a bit ripped off if I'd payed £7.19 for it.

You can get a similar experience to playing this game by reading the book Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, aka Ask A Mortician.  This isn't surprising because both Caitlin Doughty and The Order of the Good Death, with which she is associated, are both acknowledged at the end of the game.  I think 'acknowledged' is the right word - instead of, for example, 'credited' - but I'm not 100% sure and would need to replay the game to check.  To be honest, the mortician's career progression and the decisions she makes - without your input - feels a lot like propaganda for the Order of the Good Death.  I can't say I like the propaganda aspect but, also, I do agree with their goals and their approach to the death industry, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's making me uncomfortable.  I think it has to do with the mortician being such a blank slate and being the player's avatar, but also making her own decisions and whims without us.  It feels as if the game is telling us "you agree with this, you want this" but not actually interacting with us or accepting any input from us.  Like we're being railroaded.  

I'm not sure what would fix the rail-roading aspect for me.  Maybe it's as simple as giving us more input.  Maybe let us make some decisions about how the mortician's career will go, and explain to us the pros and cons of each step.  There must be a reason the funeral industry is how it is, and why most morticians don't make the decisions the protagonist does.  Why is that?  Sure, some of it might be "because they're evil and only care about money", but I doubt that's all of it.  Maybe some of it is "because there just isn't enough land" or because "X is really expensive" or "the general public don't know enough to value this skill so people can't earn a living this way".  I'd like to have seen more of that explored.  As it is, it feels like some issues exist in the middle of the game, to force the mortician's workplace to change, but then those issues just suddenly disappear when it feels like, realistically, they should still be in play for her final career move.  If that makes sense.  I'm trying to avoid spoilers.  With spoilers, what I'm trying to say is: if the funeral industry is so bad that Rose is forced to sell her family-owned funeral home to a big corporation, how does the mortician afford to start her own 'wild' funeral home?  What did she do differently?  Why did the money struggles suddenly go away?

Overall, I had a good experience playing this game.  Like I said above, I might not feel that way if I'd paid four times as much for it, so I can't recommend buying it at full price.  Also, like I said, it feels more like well-made workplace training + propaganda than a game, which has garnered it some bad reviews.

I feel pressured to make a recommendation - yes, you should buy it or no, you should not - or to assign a rating, or state whether this game is good or bad, because that's how many sites invite us to review products.  But, I don't actually think that's what reviews are for.  I can't disagree with the bad reviews on steam, they are accurately describing aspects of the game.  I also agree with the good reviews.  This is what the game is, and now you have that information, you can make your own decision about whether it's worth buying.