Summary
The Mortuary Assistant finally makes its ghastly appearance on PlayStation 5, and brings along a ton of hellish bugs and glitches with it as well. The controls are awful and navigation is a pain. Still, DarkStone Digital has created a unique and engaging horror experience that excels in plenty of refreshing ways and is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. But maybe play the PC version instead for now.
Developer – DarkStone Digital
Publisher – DreadXP
Platforms – PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Review copy given by publisher

Indie horror titles nowadays are a dime a dozen, and most of the time are mediocre walking simulators with cheap jump scares. It’s refreshing to see something new enter the space, and that’s none other than The Mortuary Assistant. Don’t be fooled by its simulator-like appearance as it’s an experience like no other. When it was initially released back in 2022 on PC, the game garnered praise for its innovative gameplay and storytelling mechanics, and now it’s finally coming out on consoles packaged into a Definitive Edition.
One of the standout features of The Mortuary Assistant is its compelling narrative. The game places you in the shoes of a young woman named Rebecca who encounters supernatural events while performing routine tasks. The story is rich with lore and unfolds gradually, keeping you engaged and curious about what will happen next, without relying on stereotypical jump scares. The narrative is well-crafted, with a perfect blend of suspense and horror that keeps you on edge, as it dives into Rebecca’s past as well as the history behind River Fields Mortuary.

So what do you do in the game you might ask? Well, you’re an assistant at a mortuary, duh! The gameplay boils down to performing routine tasks that an actual mortuary assistant would partake in, such as preparing a dead body for embalming out of cold storage. The game combines traditional point-and-click adventure elements with immersive first-person exploration at the location of a small mortuary clinic. However, demonic entities quickly make themselves known throughout the clinic, pitting you in a race against time to uncover them and exorcise them. You must look for unusual marks on the cadavers, figure out the demon’s name, collect enough sigils to create a mark, and then burn the body in order to succeed. The horror elements are well-executed, with well-timed jump scares and eerie atmospheres that enhance the overall experience.
While innovative to some degree in the horror gaming realm, the gameplay can get quite repetitive. Each playthrough has you performing the same mundane tasks of preparing the body for embalming, with slight deviations depending on the demon you are facing. You’ll be crossing off a checklist of tasks every single time, such as observing the body for marks, sewing the mouth shut, and draining the liquids out of the body. The lack of clear instructions and hints combined with game-breaking bugs also makes the game more frustrating and annoying than it needs to be. There were plenty of moments where I wasn’t sure if I was stuck in a bug or if I just didn’t know what to do.

Given the original game came out two years ago, I expected a lot better in terms of the technical quality of the PlayStation 5 release. Coming in at a tiny 1.78 GB, The Mortuary Assistant takes a whopping 16 seconds to load into, which is disappointingly lengthy. Furthermore, the controls and user interface are some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a modern video game. For example, the Circle button on PlayStation is usually the “back” or “cancel” button. Here, it does nothing, and if you want to go back or cancel an action, you have to manually press the directional d-pad to a “back” button. Once a tutorial pops up and you close it, you can never see it again.
But what makes the quality of this port the worst is the plethora of game-breaking bugs and glitches. There were several times when I got soft-locked due to visual glitches that made progress nearly impossible, such as the inability to put the eye caps in the corpse or the grandma running at me and glitching out and not stabbing me. It wouldn’t be too big of an issue if you could reload a previous save, but unfortunately, this game lacks a manual save and only relies on auto-checkpoints that aren’t frequent enough. Button inputs would also not react or respond, making this game a technical mess at best.

The release of The Mortuary Assistant on PS5 comes with the Definitive Edition, which supposedly brings bug fixes and performance improvements (good joke eh?), but also new haunt events, bodies to embalm, an embalming-only mode, and seasonal events. The game is very short, taking only 1-2 hours to complete one playthrough, as it is meant to be replayed multiple times thanks to the randomization of each run. That being said, I do think it’s a little bit too much to ask for $24.99, as I think the sweet spot would have been in the $15-$20 range.
The Mortuary Assistant finally makes its ghastly appearance on PlayStation 5 and brings along a ton of hellish bugs and glitches with it as well. The controls are awful and navigation is a pain. Still, DarkStone Digital has created a unique and engaging horror experience that excels in plenty of refreshing ways and is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. But maybe play the PC version instead for now.





