Mouthwashing News

We’re now nominated as one of the finalist for Steam’s Outstanding Story-Rich Game!

Thank you all for getting us this far. Beyond the voting itself, you all have allowed Mouthwashing to receive this kind of nomination by engaging and fostering this community. Every theory. Every interpretation. Every fan creation.

Please vote for us one last time so Mouthwashing can bring home a Steam Award!

Cast your vote starting December 19th at 10am Pacific and help make Mouthwashing a winner!

Proud and thankful,
Wrong Organ and Critical Reflex

Whether it’s your fan contributions, deep-dive lore takes, silly memes, or all the other cool things you create, it never gets old. We can’t help but say: “Please keep them coming!”. Share your creations with #Mouthwashing, tag us @Wrong_Organ on Twitter, or post on the Wrong Organ and CR Channel Discord servers. Yes, we’re watching :eye:

So, about the Steam Awards… We’ve seen the banner, and… it’s calling to us. The story of Mouthwashing might have ended, but our journey is far from over. If you believe in the game as much as we do and want to show your support, click here to

[h2]Nominate MOUTHWASHING for the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award and Best Soundtrack Award![/h2]

…or for Game of the year as well. Juuust kidding. Maybe? Nah. Totally kidding.
...Unless?

Don’t forget to nominate all the other incredible games you’ve enjoyed this year! Buckshot Roulette The Steam Awards are a great way to show your appreciation.

In case you missed it, not long ago we released the Official Mouthwashing OST — 33 tracks of pure joy and the gripping coldness of the void. Listen now on Spotify and Youtube, or grab your copy on Steam. Also available on Apple music and Amazon.

Thankful and humbled,

Wrong Organ, and CR Channel

P.S. Looking for more horror gems to pick up this sale? Check our fellow CRITICAL REFLEX’s folks games:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2763670/Arctic_Eggs/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2835570/Buckshot_Roulette/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2580020/THRESHOLD/

Mouthwashing is one of the most unsettling yet coolest games to release in 2024. And as if it hadn't already ticked most of my boxes, this horror game also has a brilliant soundtrack that has attracted mass attention...
Read more.

...to the third and final part of our Q&A series! But don’t worry — this isn’t goodbye. We’ve still got a ton of exciting stuff to share.

It’s been such a blast answering your questions. We’re still deep in the amazing support and love you’ve shown for Mouthwashing. It’s starting to feel a little retrospective on the production side, but it’s still surreal. Each piece of fanart, fan edit, and even fan animation (you guys are INSANELY talented!) brings us so much joy.

So please keep it coming! Use #Mouthwashing, tag us @Wrong_Organ on Twitter, or post on the Wrong Organ and CR Channel Discord servers.

By the way, if you haven’t already, check out the Steam Point Shop for some Mouthwashing emoticons and backgrounds!



[h3]AND NOW, ONTO Q&A PART III:[/h3]

• What were the choices behind sampling in some of the songs? (The dialog in God's Favorites, Confrontation, Who Is The Birthday Boy, for example)
  A lot of choices were made by intuition and what "felt" right for the scene. The dialog in god's favorites is a mangled Pony Express advert, mangled and mixed with lines throughout the game. Like a bad memory. Most of the music is just picking up on themes and ideas that already exist in that scene but translated into music form. Who Is The Birthday Boy is directly inspired by Creep Show and the loud abrasive synthesizer work used throughout the movie, the synths sounded like they were screaming, which we thought was very fitting and something that would work for our game as well. Confrontation is just Jimmy going through it again.

• Who broke the Polle Statue in the lobby?
  Jimmy. Swansea, drunk off mouthwash, thought it was hilarious.

[h3]Tulpar crew :)[/h3]
(via @_C4NDYC41N, on Twitter)

• I just want to know if the Pony Express crew has any silly-fun hobbies they enjoy?
  Swansea’s kids are all grown up, but there’s always something broken or needing repairs in their apartments. It’s also an excuse to go make sure they’re keeping their places clean. He’ll treat them to a meal, the kids should be eating good at least. Swansea makes a mean paella but his wife is sick of it at this point. Not to worry, he takes her to fancy restaurants when they want a night out. They’ll call ahead to see if the dog is allowed to come too.
  
  Curly is into weightlifting. He spends most of his time on Earth around friends and family. Someone always has something interesting going on, and Curly enjoys trying new things when he’s not stuck on a haul. Winter is his favorite season because he’s a snow sports kind of guy.
  
  Daisuke is a regular at his local arcade. The machines are like, totally rigged though. But maybe this next try…? Anyway, Daisuke is also into thrifting some sick unique vintage clothing. He has an eye for the good stuff, and no one else is gonna show up with the same outfit either!! His parents don’t get it at all.
  
  Anya spends most of her free time studying. She runs to clear her head. When she really needs to zero out she binges the worst reality television and fast food known to man. But she’d never admit to that.
  
  Jimmy is into weightlifting. Hobbies are for people who can afford them.

• The Tulpar ship feels almost like a character itself. How did you design it?
  The hallways were designed to mimic the hallways an old submarine would have, really cold and not comforting in any manner. Then we wanted to contrast that with the common room being made up to look like some kitschy 70s interior design magazine and have a strong contrast between the two. Or Anya’s office which was inspired by classic dingy middle school nurse rooms. This was to highlight the absurdity of the design of the ship where giving the crew comfort by the company is always done in a soulless, ineffective way.
  
  We also made it a point early on in development to never show the ship from the outside. We didn’t even want any real windows or visible view of outer space itself. Both of these decisions were to underline the claustrophobia and oppressiveness of the crew’s situation now that they’re trapped. The inside of the ship is the only thing the characters can see. They don’t know if they’ll ever see anything else ever again

• If each crew member were voice acted, who would they sound like?
  Martin.

[h3]“take responsibility…”[/h3]
(via @cremecande, on Twitter)

• Did the development team anticipate this level of reception to Mouthwashing?
  No, absolutely not. Between our publisher and the developers we talked about bracing ourselves for a, at best, lukewarm reception. There are always points in a game’s development where everything seems hopeless and it feels like the game will never actually be finished, but that moment was particularly strong here. Mouthwashing was a project that only really came together right at the last few weeks of development when all the music, visuals and mechanics were implemented fully. It very narrowly escaped cancellation before that.

• What inspired the sun imagery in the common room?
  The sunset imagery was one of the first visuals we associated with Mouthwashing. Johanna pitched a slideshow to the rest of the team with her initial inspos, ideas for the game, etc. The screen being stuck on “sunset mode” was the way we justified it narratively, but from the beginning orange sunset was one of the core ideas for the visuals of the game we wanted to incorporate.
  
  For parts of early development, we played around with the idea that the ship was designed to make the crew feel more at ease through imagery of environments from Earth. The skybox would move with your camera as if you were looking out in the sky, the doors to personal rooms and the common room would have fake screens that displayed a sandy beach. We decided to scrap these ideas in favor of what you see now.

• Who did the voice acting for the characters? Was Polle's voice sampled from a specific piece of media, or were they voice-acted?
  All voice acting was done by Martin. That includes Curly, Daisuke and Polle and anything that isn't an advert in the tv sections. We wanted Polle to feel like it was pulling voice clips from random adverts to string a sentence together, so the words were recorded individually and cut into sentences in post.

It was such a pleasure answering all of these questions! If we missed anything, you might find the answer in our upcoming developer diaries.

Next up: [h2]Fan Art![/h2]


[h3]Anya[/h3]
(via @cuddlenoon, on Twitter)


[h3]Pirate Crew[/h3]
(via @anhaidule, on Twitter)


[h3]The captain and the nurse[/h3]
(via @ AztexArts, on Twitter)


[h3]Curly[/h3]
(via @pprtnkk, on Twitter)


[h3]Daisuke[/h3]
(via @_aki_no_yuki, on Twitter)


[h3]Anya[/h3]
(via @Venustasio, on Twitter)

[h3]Take a slice [/h3]
(via @bianc0re, on Twitter)


[h3]Curly[/h3]
(via @rabiadraw, on Twitter)


[h3]Sneakerhead Swansea[/h3]
(via @6kuros, on Twitter)


[h3]Mouthwashing[/h3]
(via @img_mdzs, on Twitter)

Once again thank you all,
Wrong Organ & CR Channel

This is the second in our series of Q&A post. Thanks again to everyone who wrote questions! We definitely feel like a broken record at this point, but seriously, the amount of fan art, engagement in the Wrong Organ discord server, the funny animations, we couldn't have imagined a better response to our weird game.

We're glad y'all enjoyed the last Q&A post and that it sparked some discussions!

Keep it all coming! We've had a blast looking through everything that's being created about Mouthwashing! (And yes, even the Family Guy crossovers.)

Use the #Mouthwashing hashtag, tag us @Wrong_Organ on Twitter, or post on Discord: Wrong Organ and CR Channel servers.

[h3]AND NOW, ONTO Q&A PART II:[/h3]

• How did the story and characters change during development, if at all?
  The story remained pretty much the same from the initial outline except at first the player was meant to question whether they’re playing as Jimmy or Curly much more, but that quickly became just frustrating and confusing moreso than compelling.
  
  There was going to be one more crew member, another maintenance worker who would have worked alongside Swansea and Daisuke. They were cut very early on though since they didn’t serve enough of a plot function.
  
  Curly was never supposed to be shown pre-crash until about a month before release when the script for that scene got a small rewrite. Then we had to scramble to make the model.

• If mouthwash wasn’t the thing that was in the cargo hold that the crew lived off of, what would you have used? What flavor is the mouthwash?
  Mouthwash was the first idea but we briefly considered hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol or just straight up hard liquor. Mouthwash just has that vibe of being the worst and most absurd option, plus the bottles could have a recognizable design. We considered having a few variants of different flavors but the uniformity of all the bottles being the exact same kinda adds to the sad horror of it all. The mouthwash tastes like blue.

• How did you decide on the name Wrong Organ? and what's the story behind your little mascot guy?
  Aristotle, and in fact for centuries the larger scientific community, used to believe that life could spontaneously generate from non-living matter as long as the circumstances were favorable. The base elements for life, decay and rebirth simply had to be in balance. Maggots could spring forth, immaculate, from rotting meat. Golden swarms of bees are birthed from the carcasses of cows and lions. Snakes form inside the bone marrow of human spines. Anyway the mascot is called Worba and Johanna came up with the company name.

[h3]Shelley Duvall Tribute[/h3]
(via @chen7249, on Twitter)

• Was there anything that the team wanted to include/planned for Mouthwashing that got scrapped and you wish you could have kept?
  We wanted a larger area of the ship (such as the sleeping quarters) to be accessible in the pre-crash sections but there weren't enough gameplay or narrative reasons to justify creating the extra assets and level area to make it happen. Our writer Johanna wanted Swansea to have his dog with him on board the ship but the idea was voted out because… well. Swansea still has a picture of his dog on display in Utility though.

• What was the funniest part of the game to work on?
  Coming up with slang terms and writing funny expressions for Swansea. Recording Curly’s pill feeding sounds was also a lot of fun.

• What are your inspirations for creating your music, and how would you categorize it?
  Inspiration comes from everywhere and changes depending on what the day is like. Say we saw a movie or heard a new album, that might influence what we write later. Martin tends to write music very fast and a lot of it is improvised at first to get an idea down, then edited down to something cohesive. It helps to be curious and to want to try new things as often as you can, that way creating doesn't ever turn into a habit. We would categorize it as Electronic, Ambient, New Wave, Experimental, but there's so many genres on the OST that it's hard to pinpoint.

• What were the designing processes for each character? Who was the hardest to execute fully?
  Post crash Curly was the first thing Johanna drew for the game, his appearance was always central to the identity of the story. The rest of the crew came together pretty easily since they had to be painted with pretty broad strokes personality-wise due to the limited length of the game. The designs similarly had to remain simple yet convey that character effectively. Since everyone would be wearing similar company clothing it became an opportunity in itself to convey how each character customizes/accessories their uniform.
  
  Daisuke’s patterned shirt took so long to texture! Plus his model was the first one Johanna made, then decided to use a different model base so he had to be entirely redone again from scratch. But the second model looks a lot better at least. Jimmy was difficult because we wanted him to remain an “everyman” to a degree while still having enough of a strong visual character concept to fit in with the rest of the cast.

[h3]Swan & Hibiscus[/h3]
(via @soltachan, on Twitter)

• What moment in the game was the most difficult to write/get to a point where you were happy with it?
  The length of any given talking scene was usually the most difficult thing to work around because even in a game like this which is narrative driven you don’t want the conversations to drag.
  
  One part where this was especially difficult was in the first pre-crash scene where Curly goes from having his psych eval with Anya to eventually the conversation with Jimmy in the cockpit. Initially both conversations were much longer and you got to see some of the evaluation actually be conducted. However the question/answer format was way too tedious and made the conversations stilted, which is why we ended up using a fadeout to imply the test had been done and have Curly and Jimmy talk sort of around it instead. Makes it more personal while still giving you the framing device of the psych evals. An even earlier concept had you give each character a psych eval as Curly.

• Is it canon that Curly was to be promoted after the trip (to some managerial desk role I guess?) while the others were terminated?
  No, Pony Express is going under entirely so everyone is losing their jobs. However, Curly was set to receive both a commendation and exceptional references while the rest of the crew would not.

• How does the technology of the Pony Express compare to other ships?
  The Tulpar is very much an older and cheaper model than what would be standard. Pony Express is the shipping option you know has like a consistent 30% chance of losing all your stuff entirely. But you just can’t beat those prices.

• Who is Jaxson the dog?
  The best dog.

• If Curly could have had his birthday on Earth, what flavor of cake would he like best?
  Curly isn’t all that into sweets. His friends (including Jimmy) made him a cake out of chocolate and caramel whey protein powder one year. It collapsed under its own weight and tasted like a chalkboard. One of Curly’s fondest birthday memories.

[h2]Fan Art Spotlight:[/h2]


[h3]take responsibility[/h3]
(via @spearmintaii, on Twitter)


[h3]theyaremanycolors[/h3]
(via @flamecrust, on Twitter)


[h3]it's like you said, together we can fix anything[/h3]
(via @McMorthern, on Twitter)


[h3]Them[/h3]
(via @relina_ruj, on Twitter)


[h3]Mouthwashing[/h3]
(via @Enigma_Eta, on Twitter)


[h3]Mouthwashing restaurant AU[/h3]
(via @tomimatsu2101, on Twitter)


[h3]Wonderful game![/h3]
(via @1tsKerington, on Twitter)


[h3]Don’t be daft![/h3]
(via @Skraggie, on Twitter)


[h3]curlykawa[/h3]
(via @ghoulfreaks, on Twitter)


[h3]Follow The Leader[/h3]
(via @MuffDash, on Twitter)

See you next week for Part III!

With lots of love,
Wrong Organ & CR Channel