Mouthwashing, the underground psychological horror adventure, helped a slew of new fans discover the joys of Imogen Heap. Now Imogen and the game are back on all current consoles. No excuses: it’s Halloween weekend, and what other title offers “Descend into Madness” as one of its feature bullet points?
I do mean all consoles. Windows got Mouthwashing in September 2024, where the game started the “Headlock” craze. Now the title is landing on Nintendo Switch (1 and 2), PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X — today. And that music in the trailer sounds — familiar!
Imogen herself makes the announcement:
This is the story of a moody, gripping story of a space freighter crew “stranded in the empty reaches of space, shrouded in perpetual sunset.” One of the things I love about gaming as a medium is the way you can get sucked into the story and characters. Mouthwashing‘s crew has that quality. Maybe there’s some overlap in “play” in music and gaming. Whatever the reason, fans found a way to bring the game and song together, and then the game fandom — and the rest of the internet — discovered what a damn great song “Headlock” is.
And you get things like this:
And this:
Maybe there’s something to the fact that a game and a song are both possible to pick up and play.
But we need a reminder of this marriage between media right now. Games and music are both suffering right now, as corporate consolidation, layoffs, and looming AI could convince people they don’t matter. But you know you’re better than this.
Screenshots courtesy Critical Reflex, the developers.
And the original. It’s good to have it on replay all over again.
Bonus: there is a fan-made zine for the game called Dead Pixel. The original links are dead, but archive.org has it:
https://archive.org/details/dead-pixel-final-desktop-version/mode/2up