I was a little late to The Mortuary Assistant party, only having played it last year after repeated clips of the game on TikTok sparked my interest. I’m not quite sure why I missed it—maybe a horror game set in a mortuary was a little too on the nose for me, so I assumed that it would be some cheap jump-scare-laden attempt at indie horror. Oh, how wrong I was…
The Mortuary Assistant surprised me in all the best ways—as anyone familiar with my writing will know, my ceiling for good horror is pretty high—not only being a well-crafted game but one that was genuinely scary. What surprised me even more is how it doesn’t seem like CGMag reviewed it when it was released. Thankfully, the release of the Definitive Edition has given me a chance to provide my critical eye for this horror phenomenon.
However, since this is the Definitive Edition specifically being released for modern consoles, this review is going to be somewhat two-fold—a look at the game itself and how it fares on the PlayStation 5. With that in mind, The Mortuary Assistant is an incredible game, but its jump to the PS5 might be better classified as the Diminutive Edition—I tried my best…
The Mortuary Assistant puts players in the role of Rebecca Owens, who, after completing her mortician’s internship, is called to work one night at the River Fields Mortuary. However, things take a drastic turn when she learns that a demonic entity has been present within the mortuary and has attached itself to her. Rebecca must continue her tasks, embalming the bodies and performing an ancient ritual to banish the demon and save her soul.
“The Mortuary Assistant surprised me in all the best ways—not only being a well-crafted game but one that was genuinely scary.”
While it’s a fairly simple plot for a horror game, it adds a lot of intrigue by requiring players to find additional information about the origins of the possession, Rebecca’s own traumatic past and even events involving the mortuary’s owner and previous demonic target Raymond Delver. What’s unique about the story is how it not only forces the player to add its discovery to their already long list of tasks, but its also an additional element to the horror—as specific scares provide subtle context, or literally pull Rebecca into a hellscape of her memories. It’s an excellent use of storytelling through gameplay that few games manage to achieve.
But the real standout is the gameplay. Players must embalm three corpses in the night, finding the body hosting the demon and burning it with a talisman that has the correct runes identifying its name. All the while, the effects of Rebecca’s current possession are slowly ramping up, slowly revealing the runes that spell the demon’s name but effectively putting players on a timer.
It’s an incredibly effective gameplay loop that takes cues from games like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Phasmaphobia and gives players a job to do to keep them occupied and maintain the tension of the scares. Furthermore, the way all the tools you need for embalming are scattered around the operating room consistently keeps you moving, allowing for certain jump scares that feel organic and earned.
The scares themselves also feature an effective range of spine-tinglingly subtle to outright pants-crapping. By now, I’m sure everyone knows of The Mortuary Assistant’s unofficial mascot: The Mimic, but it’s incredible how effective he is outside of being a creepy-looking creature. While sometimes you’ll turn around and see him tucked in a corner only to scurry away in an unsettlingly disjointed way, there are other moments where he’ll slowly poke his head up behind a table or computer, and if you’re not paying attention, it can be incredibly horrifying.
Sometimes you’ll be walking down a hallway, only for a shadowy figure or horrifying body to run past a doorway, and other times eerie whisperings will get the hair on the back of your neck standing. The Mortuary Assistant is constantly keeping you on your guard and instilling a quiet sense of panic within you, so when a jumpscare does happen, it lands perfectly.
However, one of the unfortunate side-effects of tying some of the story elements to the scares is getting repeat scares. The first time you see a coffin in the hall with the blood-curdling screams of a woman coming from it is pretty effective, but it loses some of its sting after the second or third time. And while Darkstone Digital did go a long way to add a lot more scares and moments to The Mortuary Assistant, particularly with the Definitive Edition, in an attempt to keep it fresh; getting repeat scares can pull the player out of the experience somewhat.
“Navigating menus in The Mortuary Assistant is a nightmare as you manually select every available option until you find the one you want.”
Visually, The Mortuary Assistant is fantastic, making superb use of its small setting to a genuinely chilling effect. Mortuaries are, by default, creepy environments combining the sterility of a medical building with the natural horror of death, but The Mortuary Assistant uses incredibly clever design to add to the horror.
The embalming room is connected to the main hall and the morgue by two narrow hallways, forcing players to constantly be on edge for what might be waiting around the corner or on the other side of the doorway. Furthermore, by the nature of its design, there are a lot of nooks and crannies for spooks to peek out from. Adding to this is some superb voice acting from Melissa Medína who really sells the confusion, stress and terror of Rebecca trapped in a situation she doesn’t fully understand.
This brings us to the PlayStation 5 version of The Mortuary Assistant which fares far less better than its PC counterpart. While the base game and experience are still intact, it feels like a less optimized version in a lot of different ways. For starters, controls are incredibly awkward—The Mortuary Assistant has controller support on PC but I think most can agree it was the worst way to play it.
Navigating menus in The Mortuary Assistant is a nightmare as you manually select every available option until you find the one you want. It seems like a controller just wasn’t factored into the design of the computer where you need to input information about each body—especially if you try to click into the other program, which gives you information about the demon.
Furthermore, it’s the awkward look-controls in The Mortuary Assistant that really make this a drag. I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again for any developer reading: ADD. GYROSCOPIC. AIMING. Trying to look around and grab tiny items with sticks that swing wildly when you touch them or stop immediately when you let go always feels awkward and imprecise, no matter how much you adjust the sensitivity.
While in terms of button mapping, playing with a controller is fine, it has the telltale signs of a game that wasn’t made for a controller, attempting to support them without really enhancing the experience to do so. This can be seen most in the way you complete your embalming tasks—usually requiring you to pull a context tab and press a context button—which feels fluid and easy with a mouse but awkwardly lumbers with a controller. You’re adapting a game that was specifically designed to factor in the precision and fluidity of a mouse. The PS5 AND Nintendo Switch can bridge the gap with gyroscopic aiming; just make it a feature.
“Navigating menus in The Mortuary Assistant is a nightmare as you manually select every available option until you find the one you want.”
Now, this problem isn’t exclusive to the PS5, but it’s honestly disappointing to see how little effort went into bringing this incredible game to a console that could genuinely handle it. Games NEED to take their consoles into account and be designed and tailored to how they’re going to be played. It’s one thing when playing with a controller is a potential option for how you want your game to be played, and it’s another when it’s essentially the ONLY way it’s going to be.
Furthermore, the audio/visual of the PlayStation 5 version feels much more paired down than its PC counterpart, which seems incredibly odd. I noticed it immediately when I entered the morgue, and Rebecca’s footsteps weren’t making any noise. Also, there was one moment when Raymond phased through a desk that genuinely made me laugh.
But it was the little details that were oddly missing as well that made the PS5 feel vastly inferior. I thought it was kind of strange that after sewing up a cadaver’s neck, there were no stitches the same way there were on the PC version—sometimes they appear and others don’t. A lot of textures on smaller objects are pathetically low-res, and there’s just a cheapness to it overall—like The Mortuary Assistant’s visuals were set to Low for the PS5 port.
Also, I dunno who thought Rebecca zooming across the Mortuary at Mach speed when sprinting was a good idea, but it really turns the horror game into an outright comedy, especially considering she doesn’t have footsteps.
The Mortuary Assistant is undoubtedly an amazing game, and if you want a truly horrifying experience, you’d be doing yourself a disservice not to check it out. However, it seems like if you really want the full experience, you should play it on PC—which honestly isn’t hard because the system requirements for it aren’t huge, which makes this whole PS5 thing even more upsetting. However, if you’re not confident in your PC and are looking for an excellent horror game, you could certainly do worse. It’s just kind of a shame this console port couldn’t have done better.
