You've probably heard of body positive and sex positive before. They're terms that call for an acceptance of what, in the past, social norms forced people to be ashamed of. Well, in respect to these positives, A Mortician's Tale calls for a death positive conversation.
In quiet, contemplative form, you move the mortician through fishbowl levels. Receive and prepare dead bodies for burial or cremation. Read some don't-let-anybody-else-read-this emails. Talk to people visiting the funeral home. Hear their happy and sad stories.
The game is reportedly short, linear, and lacks meaningful choices. It may be helpful to approach this as more of a visual novel. But it's refreshing to see a depiction of what happens to a body after it dies that doesn't involve weird, comically horrific, Halloween-costumed freaks auditioning for Dante's Inferno. This is at least a topic-broadening discussion about our relationship with death, and the "western death industry."
A Mortician's Tale launched on PC yesterday, October 18. It's the first game from Toronto-based indie studio Laundry Bear Games. Cute fact: They're named after the English translation for the Swedish word for raccoons—laundry bears.
