I first heard about Mouthwashing through a friend, who heard about it from Tumblr. This is quite bizarre if you know anything about Mouthwashing, a low poly, grimy horror game about the last days of the crew aboard a spaceship. It came out in September on PC, and like many indie gems, launched to some critical acclaim but didn’t take off at first. But some time in October, word started to get around about this strange little game. On Tumblr, users had begun creating fanart and engaging in heated discussions about its characters, and who was ultimately responsible for the ship’s demise. I then started noticing it getting picked up by streamers more, consistently showing up in my live recommendations on TikTok.So one night, I decided to try it for myself. It only takes three hours to play, but by the end I felt like I had spent an eternity watching a small world crumble. The stories of these five people brought together by a space courier corporation called Pony Express and left to die is deeply depressing, and the claustrophobic mood of both the ship itself and their situation is palpable. Mouthwashing is bloody, tense, often disgusting, and tragic. I wanted to go lie down in a dark room and stare at the ceiling after finishing it. And I loved it.Others loved it too, so much so that it’s become a unique indie game success story. Despite it being a few months since launch, it’s still going strong, gathering new players and selling more copies. It’s also received nominations at The Indie Game Awards for Game of the Year and Best Narrative, and as game awards season continues, we can expect to see more love incoming. Basically, if you haven’t heard about Mouthwashing before, you will very soon.Who is responsible? Fancy a capful? Existential, weird and dark, Mouthwashing’s surreal philosophical processing of mortality hits hardMouthwashing initiasports bettinglly appealed to many horror fans with its striking art style and pedigree. It was developed by Wrong Organ, creator of 2022’s bizarre How Fish is Made, and published by Critical Reflex. The indie publisher doesn’t strictly work on horror titles, but its focus on more abstract projects has resulted in some intriguing releases, such as 2024 viral hit Buckshot Roulette.It launched on September 26, and according to SteamDB, it’s accrued new concurrent players each month ever since – with October seeing a nearly 260% jump. Granted, this amounts to hundreds of players, which doesn’t hold up against multiplayer games on Steam that can rake in millions of players over years, but for a single player title you can finish in an evening, the fact it’s grown and sales have remained steady over the following months is rare.Simon Carless, the founder of video game sales analysis firm GameDiscoverCo, says it’s sold “at least 10-15x more lifetime copies on Steam compared to its first week sales numbers,” which is largely unheard of for a short, lo-fi, narrative horror. A game like this would’ve maybe sold most of its copies in the first week, and dropped off into obscurity.”This is incredibly rare compared to most games, which quickly decrease in sales over time,” Carless says. “It looks like horror streamer enthusiasm in particular – and word of mouth – have really expanded its reach beyond normal.”Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter