Game Review: A Mortician's Tale

I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews.

How many people have you killed in a video game? Thousands? At least. But how many funerals have you performed in game? Hardly any.

It's hard to describe A Mortician's Tale as a game. It is a lovely experience where you play a new employee of a funeral home. The game is, literally, preparing the corpses and dealing with the families of the deceased.

Parts of the gameplay are reminiscent of the Wii's Trauma Centre surgeon simulator game. Scalpels, stiches, and fluids everywhere. This isn't a gory game, everything is handled sensitively.

It advertises itself as taking an hour to complete. That's about right. There are no real choices, no scores, and only a simple story. It's almost a trailer for what a full game could be and, frankly, I'd like to play a full-length version.

In a weird way, it reminded me of the deleted scenes in Austin Powers

Perhaps every blood 'n' guts shoot-em-up should force you to deal with the messy reality of your trail of the dead?