Reviews

• lilitjohn

  Nov 26, 2022

  A pretty short game with an oddly sweet story. The gameplay part of it can feel repetitive and a little bland, but the story for each person that you take care of compensates for this. The game has a really nice way to tell its story.
• Kenstagator

  Jul 24, 2023

  Okay, let's talk about A Mortician's Tale—a game that tackles death in a way we rarely see in videogames. Death is often just a mechanic in games, a punishment or obstacle to overcome. But this game, created by Laundry Bear Games, takes a different approach. It faces death head-on, not as a gameplay element, but as a deeply human experience. You step into the role of a young funeral director, handling the preparations for cremation and burial. It's a raw and intimate journey, showing you the real work behind the scenes. Cremation isn't just turning bodies to ash—it involves much more, like crushing bones and massaging limbs for embalming fluid. The brilliance of A Mortician's Tale lies in its simple click-based simulation gameplay. Through casual clicks, you perform these mundane mortician tasks. It's a haunting juxtaposition—clicking a scalpel to make an incision, draining blood, washing your hands—tasks that deal with one of the scariest things in the world, done in a casual manner. The game also delves into the realities of the death industry. You face the pressure of a corporate funeral service imposing its ideology on a small family-owned funeral home. It highlights the struggles of going against a person's last wishes or trying to upsell unnecessary funeral packages to grieving families. But amidst the tragedy, A Mortician's Tale gradually moves towards embracing the "death positive" movement. It makes death feel more familiar, more real, and more manageable. While it can't fully address all cultural fears about death, it opens up a conversation and provides a valuable service. As a culture, we could benefit from taking death more seriously and discussing it with honesty and generosity. And the same goes for videogames—they can also play a role in exploring deeper and more authentic themes like this. So, kudos to Laundry Bear Games for this unique and thought-provoking experience.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 7, 2023

  Like many others have said, A Mortician's Tale, falls flat by holding your hand every step of the game, treating you as though you're playing a tutorial. The game could be so much better than it is by involving us in other aspects of funeral services: arrangement, hearse, florist. It also could expand on some of the green forms of funeral service that the game pushes or various cultural aspects of burials and cremations that are mentioned only in emails. All that being said, A Mortician's Tale still manages to bring some humanity to this cozy The Mortuary Assistant game. As morbid as this may sound, this was the first game I've played since the death of my father. He passed under unusual circumstances at a hospital and no family was contacted to let us know when he was admitted to the hospital nor even about his death, so we didn't end up being there for him in his last moments nor did we end up getting his remains. This game has been able to provide me with even a minor sense of closure surrounding these circumstances and helped me process my grief. As Charlie learns the ins and outs of being a mortician and running a funeral home business, there's an emphasis on the importance of caring for and honoring the dead and their wishes. I can only hope that my father was cared for in that way. The game is bittersweet, honest, and informative with a love of humanity that gives me peace. 5/10
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2017

  The game itself is quite interesting to see the process that happens...however.. [list] [*] It tells you what to do on every single one of them, even if you have already done that specific one...so it always feels like one big tutotrial [*] there appears to be no actual point to the game apart from seeing what happens in the life of a mortician [*] no sort of goal, there isn't anything to strive for in terms of upgrades, items, or anything like that [/list] All in all, I'd recommend just for the sake of seeing the processes, however for its original price I think it is wayy too up there for what you get...I got it on discount and still think it could have been lower.. £5 maybe
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2017

  From start to end the game lasted 43 minutes total before the end. This game is way over priced, even with the 20% off sale. It's hardly even a game considering you can't make any mistakes and there is nothing that you are doing aside from reading the emails and doing exactly what it tells you to do. There could have been so much done with this like some of the older operation style games but this definitely wasn't worth it.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2017

  This game is very charming and gives a unique perspective to death. It is calm and thought provoking, and it will probably sit with you differently depending on if you have dealt with death in your life before. However, the game is very short. Just as you are getting into the story, it ends. When I saw it was ending, I actually thought "this can't be the end, we haven't even started". It sets up the start of a story but drops it off very suddenly. I would pay £3 for this max - it needs to be about 3 times as long with more development in the story to justify the price. A shame, as the premise of the game is unique and I enjoyed it. I just wanted so much more.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2017

  Wow. As someone who works at a funeral home, I was really interested to see what Laundry Bear had up their sleeves. The answer: barely anything. To play through the game, it took me all of 40 minutes from start to finish. FORTY MINUTES. And in those 40 minutes, I did literally EVERYTHING you could do. I read all the emails. I talked to every family member. I prepped every body whether it be for a traditional service or a cremation. All of this while having my hand held like a rambuctious 2 year walking through a parking lot with his overprotective helicopter parent. You can't make any mistakes during prep. The game literally has a giant bar at the top telling you what to do EVERY SINGLE TIME. And if you try to go off book? Nothing happens. You literally can't fail. Oh, and the entire message of the "story"? Corporations are EVIL! Like that hasn't been rehashed in about 1,000 new games every year. All in all, you play a very tiny part in each of these funeral services. You don't take a hearse and go pick up any of these bodies. You don't help guide these digital families through the arrangement process. You don't work with cemeteries or churches or local florists or anything. You just do a quick embalm/cremation and wander around at the visitation, listening to people vaguely talk about their loved one before moving on to the next one. I can't recommend this game even a little bit, even if it's free. It has no gameplay value, much less replayability value. And I'm sorry if this review seems a bit longer than the game itself. I had quite a bit of extra time to kill...
• gamedeal user

  Oct 20, 2017

  There is only one finality in life - Death A Mortician´s Tale is exactly what it sounds like.. or not so much as a tale then more the description of the work of a freshly appointed Mortician. In that way it´s more of an education software really, since it describes the steps of work in more or less detail. You get your assignment, move through the - repeating - steps and pay your respects. The "Tale" part keeps itself to the emails you may or may not read, about the surroundings of the Mortician, which include quite some critique to the "Big Death Industry". Regarding the game part.. there is not much besides the preparing body steps, regarding the story it also is only marginally existent. Graphics are ok if you like the style, Music is fitting to the theme. Time for completing the game is around 45 minutes (and i´ve read the emails etc..). Conclusio: All in all an ok educational game, with some aspects to think about.. but for the price it is offered, other free games offer more in puncto actual gameplay, content etc. So i only would recommend it to people interested in the topic at a sale. 4/10
• gamedeal user

  Oct 29, 2017

  This is an interesting and gentle look into the mortuary and funeral industry. However, its gentleness also holds a bit of a drawback in that it remains somewhat superficial because it feels like a tutorial instead of a full game. The families of the deceased in the game give you instructions on what to do with the body, and the game allows you only to do that. Although some moral choices are presented, you only really get to make the choice in your own mind; the game doesn't let you do anything different. For instance, one family instructs you to do a traditional burial even though the deceased wanted cremation. You have no choice but to prepare the body for traditional burial. Even once you know what to do for each case, the game continues to pause every action screen to tell you what to do, whether you want it to or not. This cannot be turned off. From the hype this game was receiving, I was under the impression that it was a longer, choose-your-own-adventure style game with consequences for your actions; I would have liked to see the outcomes of different paths. To my greater disappointment, about a third of the game is spent reading emails - one thread of which is factoids about death customs, one of which is a co-worker complaining and telling stories about work or asking if you want food, one of which is a sister (?) whose dialogue is gratingly annoying, and one is requests from the funeral home owner. You cannot reply to any of these, except for an "auto-reply" of "ok, I'll do it!" or "sure thing!" to the home director. From a technical standpoint, this game is well-made and clean, with a nice colour and design scheme and a good soundtrack. However, its downfalls are very little storyline/action flexibility, and a very short play time (I finished in just over an hour). I do feel like $17.49 was very steep for what is essentially a minigame/tutorial with a single playthrough. With no variation in storyline or endings, I won't play again.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 23, 2017

  The game can be finished within 40 minutes. There's no reason a game that is less than an hour should cost this much.