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A Mortician's Tale

A death-positive game where you play as a mortician tasked with running a funeral home · By Laundry Bear Games

Excellent game about death and the death industry

A topic by Kyu created Apr 16, 2021 Views: 387 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
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I love this game a lot, and I think it's a great introduction to death positivity and the death industry. (not a professional, just an enthusiast.)  It plays almost like a visual novel, with little interactive sections where you prepare the bodies. 

The art style is  very soothing and conveys enough information for you to understand the story, while being minimalist allowing the player to see death and bodies in a non-shock value way.  The emails are written very well, I felt very connected to these characters that you never meet in person in the game. (The sister character is amazing.) The monthly death newsletter is a nice way to introduce players to new death related concepts, like aquamation, and the main plotline with the funeral home opens up a good discussion about the death industry.

The use of more "gamey" mechanics in the body preparation does two great things: 1, it teaches the player about how bodies are prepared and 2, it helps normalize the idea of interacting with death. It's nice that you can't actually mess up, or do anything disrespectful. I don't think the game needs to be overall "more gamey," I think it benefits a lot from player interaction without becoming disrespectful or removed from the subject matter. I also appreciate the diversity in family dynamics around the deceased that you assist, allowing you to think more about that aspect of funerals as well. (I also appreciate the very well integrated way the game allows the player to opt out of a potentially upsetting funeral.)

All and all I definitely recommend it, especially for people curious about these topics. I also just recommend death positivity in general, which is one of the theses of this game.

See my playthrough of it here

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I felt the same way. I just finished playing through and I really enjoyed it. Made me think. Learned some new things.

I enjoyed this game a lot as well.