The Mortuary Assistant review — Exorcist in training

Taking on an apprenticeship at River Fields Mortuary, Rebecca Owens is learning the ropes on embalming the deceased. After a rocky first day, she is surprisingly called in at night to work on her own. As the evening progresses, she learns there is something different about these bodies, as a sinister force tightens its grip on her soul. Unable to leave the premises, Rebecca must instead take part in an occult ritual in order to see the light of day.

Each night, you’ll be tasked with embalming three bodies. This is actually pretty involved, with a full checklist of objectives to complete. This is certainly not a game for the squeamish, as you’ll be getting up close and personal with the cadavers, sewing their mouths closed with wire and draining their blood through the arteries in the neck. These are just a few of the required steps when preparing the body, so just be prepared for graphic imagery before going in.

The dead aren’t your only companion at the Mortuary though, with a demonic entity slowly taking hold as the evening goes on. You’ll need to take notice of how the possession is developing, as to banish the demon you’ll need to properly ascertain clues to figure out its name as well as its host. These can be more obvious tells like the body twitching on the table, but can also be more subtle. The demon will also leave marks around the Mortuary which can be discovered by burning letting paper to reveal portions of its name. While simple, it was still fun to slowly piece together the true nature of the beast that stalked me from the darkness.

Once you’ve gathered all the clues, you will have to write the demon’s name on a clay seal, and place it on the host body before burning them together in the cremation retort. The game features six endings depending on many factors, but choosing the correct host and naming the demon properly is one of the main variables, so if you get it wrong and receive a bad ending you can simply try again the next night.

The narrative extends itself beyond just exorcizing a demon and embalming bodies, and explores Rebecca’s past through various haunt sequences. These include both flashbacks and twisted nightmare realms that give you a short break from the confines of the Mortuary. These were usually fun to explore and provided some additional lore on how Rebecca ended up entangled with the demon she must now face.

Outside of the main story, there’s also an Embalming Only mode that can be selected from the title menu. This is an alternative game mode that removes all of the horror elements and narrative, and lets you engage with just the embalming procedure. There’s also a few other settings you can change like weather, which creates an interesting casual side mode if you feel so inclined.

While the haunts and creepy atmosphere are properly showcased, the actual gameplay unfortunately is not of the same quality. Your character can’t hold more than two ‘large’ objects at once, but with the clipboard taking up one slot, you really can only carry one item at a time. This was extremely annoying to play around, as I was always fumbling around in my inventory if I accidentally picked up the wrong item. Instead of being able to pick up all the chemicals you need to drain the body at once, you have to pick up and pour them in one at a time, walking across the room and returning to the machine at least four times to progress. Repeating this monotony over and over with multiple bodies each night became quite tedious to say the least.

The environments themselves were also not polished, as textures and objects flickered in and out and were generally low resolution.  Bodies would also sometimes not reflect the operations being performed, with stitches or incisions just disappearing all together. I understand that this is a lower budget indie-horror and I actually liked the aesthetic they were going for, but when things like drawers not sliding open or objects not functioning properly it begins to harm the experience. These are likely symptoms of a lower quality console port, as controls, movement and menus all feel like they need work.

There was so much I found myself intrigued by within The Mortuary Assistant, but every time I felt myself being drawn in the game would get in its own way with jank. A chilling whisper in my ear while I was inspecting a body would make my skin crawl, but would quickly dissipate when nearly the entire building would pop out of existence when I went to investigate. It’s hard to look beyond the veil of distractions that take away from the experience, but if you manage to squint hard enough there really is a great horror game underneath it all. 

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