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leonayao's A Mortician's Tale (PC)
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| [September 26, 2018 10:40:05 PM]
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Since I already finished the game, I replayed it once again.
If this game’s purpose is to get people to think about “what is death?” then it is considered as a successful game. There are various people died in different ways. For example, there was a woman who died from breast cancer, an old man who died from aging, adolescence who killed himself and the list goes on. After replaying I had some thoughts on what was the reason they displayed different ways of death, maybe the creator was trying to let us think about the people who were already dead in our life or people who might have a risk to die. In the process of cremation required the player to take the bones and pieces, and turn it into ashes. Then we have to put the ashes into a vessel. The last step of this process is to put a name tag inside the vessel, which is made by a piece of small metal for identification. This makes me think of how people will turn into dust and become nothing. The identification metal is what we endow meaning to it, a prove that we have existed in the world.
There were two corpses that made a deep impression of me. One was the teenager who suicided. Before receiving the body, players had the option to refuse to take care of the body for the funeral. “Is suicide something hard for you to deal with?” the email said. If anyone who suffered a loss of a close one who suicided, will they be offended when the scene is recreated in a game? I think it is acceptable because I get to choose. I chose to deal with the corpse and attended the funeral once again, and I paid extra attention to the dialog of the family member. Just in a few sentences, but I can tell the family member was not expecting this to happen. Is this a message from the game to ask players to pay more attention for those who are mentally suffering? If so, I hope that there were more content in the game. The game threw out ideas and messages, but they were weak, it did not extend it to the next level. Although it is an indie game, it doesn’t change the fact that due to the poorly written dialog and awkward 3D motion of the characters lowered the player’s experience. Another corpse that made a deep impression of me was a corpse of a homeless people. He had no accessories to identify him but only a metal name tag. The player was the only one who “attended” his funeral. In this case, less content means a lot. The game successfully recreated the scene of loneliness for a human being having nobody. In this case, less equals more.
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| [September 24, 2018 11:06:12 PM]
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I started playing the second part of the game. I continued playing and discovered that the gameplay patterns are fairly similar and repetitive. I remembered all the steps of cleaning the corpses and sending them to the crematory. I think it would be interesting if they designed different task to accomplish for each corpse to prepare them for the funeral. However, I think the creator of the game intend to make the game more realistic as if it is a stimulator of mortician’s daily life.
The game is a standard click and drag, narrative-base game. I as a player am expecting more from the narrative perspective, to understand the life of the corpse. However, in most of the funeral I attended in the game, the NPC was either crying, silent, or talking about something else that is not related to the dead. For example, they would talk about how cold is the air conditioner or how delicious the food is. I’ve been to many funerals, so this is not what I expected from a funeral. People normally weep and talk about the time when the time that the dead is once still alive. I assumed maybe this is what the creator of the game experienced, or else he won’t create a game that doesn’t show much moral empathy during a funeral. I also doubt that they did not do a good job.
This game constantly makes me wonder and question about what the purpose is. Does it want to make players feel bad? Or does it want to encourage players to treasure their beloved because funerals are terrible? The concept of this game is interesting because it focused on a sensitive topic. However, I do not think it did a good job. I feel like those people who died in the game doesn’t even have many stories to tell, and people around the dead doesn’t care about him at all. The message of the game seemed to be “Life is just sad and miserable, and there is nothing after death”.
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| [September 23, 2018 07:50:14 PM]
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This game mortician introduced to me how a funeral home does. The player plays as the protagonist, Charlie, and is asked to complete a series of task. Her goal is to clean and prepare dead bodies for the funeral. I like the idea of introducing an unfamiliar job, the morticians. Most of the time we don’t see them on televisions or movies because their job is related to death, and death is a topic that most people want to avoid to talk about. We all tend to avoid negative things.
There are only two maps in the game, which is the room where Charlie does her job and the room where the actual funerals are held. I am unsatisfied with the repetitive graphics; however, this is a narrative-based game, which I gave more attention to the context of the game than the graphic. Players can read through emails to understand the outside world besides the two room that is displayed in the game. For example, relationship with co-workers and friends, and the situation of the company. I love how I received an email from my friend in the game; her emails are fun to read which balanced out the depressing atmosphere throughout the game. I learned a lot of interesting facts about funerals, for example, they offer options for LGBTQ people to choose their identity and how they look like during the funeral. They also introduced a different aspect of the funeral from a different culture.
When the funerals are held in the game, I did get a little offended by that. Some of the characters were talking about other minor things instead of the person who was dead in front of them. There is a kid playing video games at the funeral. Although I found it rude, it reminds me that little kids do not quite understand the concept of “death.” Every story of the death was fairly short. Although I listened to all the conversation, I still don’t get to know that person more. I hope that they could have included more content of the death. It made me feel like life is unworthy and there is no point in speaking the story of the dead people.
I am looking forward to learn more about this game.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Sep 23rd, 2018 at 19:50:42.
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leonayao's A Mortician's Tale (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 23 September, 2018
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