A Mortician’s Tale Review

Have you ever wished to become a mortician? No? Me neither. Alas it is the premise of the game. You play as Charlie, with the task of running a funeral home complete with handling the diseased, the grieving family and the funeral procedings. That means you are going to become familiar with the corpses of the diseased. This is done through a mini-game, where you take on the task of embalming said person.

As you progress through the game the embalming mini-game becomes more and more complex adding in new mechanics. Besides embalming, the game consists of checking your e-mails, walking around your office and talking to the relatives of the diseased.

The game itself is very short clocking in at under two hours to complete the game and all associated achievements. A lot of the time is spent on checking your e-mails, and reading through the walls of texts you recieve. Since  this is the main way the game does storytelling it is necessary to read through them to have any idea of what is going on. This feels like a drag, and borderlines on being boring.

The other majority of the game is reserved for the embalming mini-game. It is quite macabre albeit a good copy of what expires in real life. So it works great as a teaching moment on what happens behind the closed doors of the mortician.

Visually the game surely has an art direction. There is not too many details (which probably is for the better) and the color scheme is heavily favored in grey, red and purple. It is quite uniform, somber and a tad boring. Since the subject is death, and the rituals of preparation of the dead, the colors are somewhat fitting.

The same can be said for the soundtrack. It is a very slow track, more akin to ambience than actual music. It is relaxing, and sets a tone.

A Mortician’s Tale is an interesting idea, and trying to normalize the rituals around preparing the dead is something worthwhile. Sadly the game fails a bit on it’s tail due to all the reading you have to do to understand the story. It clogs up too much of the time spent within the game and makes a slow game play even slower. The story itself is not the greatest and it is hard to become invested in it.

The thing I remember the most from the game is the embalming mini-game, which atleast is a bit interesting. The rest of the game though, does not spark the same interest.