Demons and gaslighting – The real terrors of The Mortuary Assistant

The Mortuary Assistant is a first-person sim where you play as—you guessed it—a mortuary assistant. Of course, in true horror fashion, you soon find out that there is nothing normal about these bodies, or your situation. With no option to leave, you press on by embalming bodies and getting rid of demons. The game first came out in 2022, meaning it’s been on the market for a while, so why was some of the gameplay disappointing?

Everything runs fine when loading up the game, but the visuals sometimes seem grainy and are not the same quality as the PC version. Of course, it has to be taken into consideration that this article only covers ports, something that arguably always lacks in comparison to a game’s home platform.

It’s after the tutorial that things get messy. In the game, you are alone as you’ve been called in for a late-night shift and then find out you can’t leave. Because of this, you get your instructions on how to embalm a corpse via a list on a clipboard. Throughout the game, there are also audio notes from the mortician on how to spot demons and get rid of possessed bodies successfully. One of the steps is to assess your own sanity once in a while via scribbling on a Post-it note and checking for demonic symbols. You do this by walking around with a letting strip, and once it burns, a symbol will appear. The game does let you know that these symbols can appear anywhere and might be hard to find at times, as you need to check behind doors and in cupboards.

Naturally, knowing this, I was not discouraged. In fact, I found it fun to look around and search for the symbol. However, this soon became the first bug that I encountered. After around ten minutes of believing that perhaps I myself was losing it, I went to the helping hands of Reddit, where I found that lots of people experienced the same thing as me: a burned letting strip with no symbol. Of course, the issue then is that the game believes you know the symbol and would expect you to enter it into the demon cabinet correctly.

The game is solid—a fun little demon haunting—but the bugs interrupt any sense of immersion

I decided not to bother with this for now, as I wanted to enjoy playing the game, and carried on with a new body. The steps are easy to follow, especially since you get a demo body in the beginning, so there is usually no issue with doing this on your own. This allows you to enjoy the horror elements of the game. Again, however, I was met with another bug.

This time, I had to use forceps on the body, which I knew, so I picked them up in advance. When the time came to use them, the game kept telling me that I could not use the item here. At first, I assumed it was because I picked it up in advance, so I dropped it and picked up a new one. Still, the issue persisted, and I was unable to finish the body, meaning I could not progress in the game.

I think the game’s definitive version has the potential to be great fun

At this point, the magic of the experience was lost, and I put the game down. The only solution to these issues, according to the internet, was to restart your game. I’m aware that this wouldn’t have been too much of a hassle as I wasn’t far along in the game or anything, but it definitely ruined the mood. It’s a shame to see these issues, as the game is good and has an interesting plot, but it could use some work. Perhaps a solution could be to have a button that lets you respawn a body from the beginning, similar to other games that let you respawn if you get stuck in an impossible spot.

Overall, the game is solid—a fun little demon haunting—but the bugs interrupt any sense of immersion. It is worth acknowledging that this August, the developer dropped a free definitive version that features more content and bug fixes, however, this is not something I got to experience. With that in mind, I think the game’s definitive version has the potential to be great fun, but the base game remains annoying with its bugs.