Sometimes The Bodies Talk Back: The Mortuary Assistant

The Mortuary Assistant is a scary game: store.steampow...

[@ElkiLG]

The contrast between you calmly talking about the various scares and the footage of you wildly moving the mouse after each scare was very entertaining.

[@Sylthanti]

"I love existential trauma as much as the next guy"

[@ErrantSignal]

I should sell T-shirts with this on it

[@politicalnerdV]

​@@ErrantSignalI'd buy one.

[@B_B_]

now this is a game i legitimately can't play because i AM a mortuary student preparing for practicum and these kinds of spooks do actually scare me, so they are the last thing i need in my mind when doing an embalming for real LMAO

[@stevejakab274]

Whatever you do, don't watch the movie Kissed.

[@bigstupidgrin]

Is it weird to say 'thank you for your service'? Like I usually only say that to people serving in the military but yeah, this is a job I'm very thankful people do and would never ever do myself.

[@Zen-rw2fz]

wow that's cool, do the reanimator when you're at work

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Hope your exam went well!

[@bf1701]

So fun fact from a medical lab: When you seal a sample tube (for blood or urine) with a plug top, a change in temperature or atmospheric pressure can cause those tops to spontaneously pop, sometimes shooting all the way up to the ceiling. It can be a real life jump-scare, when you're working evening/night shift.

[@UnfertigeGedanken]

champaign bottle corpse cork? ^^

[@tsartomato]

speedrun of this game where poor demon tries it hardest while protagonist does things as efficiently as possible and a bunch of bros cheering behind chug chug chug chug the fluid

[@pedroscoponi4905]

God, I hope there's speedruns of this, that would amazing to watch.

[@dc8836]

Pretty much how I played it. Oh look it's another random creepy dude in the "camera blind spot" trick. Cool, you just stay there and live your life little buddy, I've gotta get this body cleaned and shipped off. I wonder if deliberately ignoring the spooks actually made the intensity director become more aggressive because it felt like I was getting a spook in the corner of the FOV or lights being turned off like every 15 sec.

[@supermoo7087]

Two in one day?? The dream???

[@mixmastermind]

Two vids at the same time dude.

[@peripheralarbor]

But which is the dream?

[@rarazalproductions519]

@@peripheralarbor The video on the game about dreams, probably.

[@qwertyqeys]

what I really appreciate is how many of these scares are completely silent. If that scare at the end of the video had a loud orchestral blaring noise when it happened it wouldn't scare me more, it'd just fry my nerves, so that restraint is very welcome

[@george867]

I dunno how intentional it is, but usually (for me) visual hallucinations are silent and quick, and sort of come out of the environment. I've never had any as aggressive as this game, I've actually never hallucinated a human figure, so i can't speak to its accuracy, but in principle theyre fairly hallucinatory. Like I said, I dunno if they exactly had that in mind when they made that decision...

[@fireaza]

It's a good sign that they've managed to come up with something actually frightening. As opposed to cheap jump scares, which are just startling. You could replace the thing doing the jump-scaring with an adorable teddy bear and the effect would be identical.

[@keinname1896]

Shit, I actually had a problem just watching the footage in the video. This game would leave me absolutely destroyed and a complete wreck. This is exactly the stuff that frightens me about horror.

[@rossamundbrennan7248]

Same, I could only listen to this video, and even that was enough to freak me out.

[@OnlyHereForCake]

Here's me, unphased by the demons and jumpscares, but fuckin squeamish about the shoving a needle under the skin bit, eugh...

[@alsomirgefaellts]

same for me ^^ absolutely no choice, i cant play this but enjoy watching it.

[@pedroscoponi4905]

I wouldn't find it fun to play this but by god do I find it interesting. Those are some good spooks.

[@AnInnocuousBlueCube]

"Extracurricular Research Cabinet" is just a delightful turn of phrase.

[@Erinkyan]

My fave thing about this game is that the horror thing is demons and not just "ooooo dead bodies are scary!!". Like, I dig that the setting contributes to the atmosphere (and, you know, dead bodies make good vessels for demons), but death is a normal part of life. It's not scary that Rebecca's a mortuary assistant - it's scary that she's being hunted by demons. The setting could be a McDonalds and it would still work.

[@OnlyHereForCake]

The Demon in the Deep Fryer

[@liveriys5971]

@@OnlyHereForCake The Rat of the deep fryer

[@irongears123]

Night shift at a haunted fast food restaurant would be a decent premise for a game!

[@Mordalon]

@@irongears123 That's essentially Five Nights at Freddy's.

[@ErrantSignal]

You know, I came like *this* close to doing a bit on retail horror. The Convenience Store in particular is an influence here, but also this game, or the opening to Don't Go Into the House, and several others. It's fascinating (okay, maybe not *that* fascinating, but certainly telling) that retail jobs are framed as nightmares so regularly!

[@FirestarLeon]

My advice for dealing with a horror games of ghosts or monsters? Basically channel some inner Ripley from Aliens energy and get PISSED. Scream angrily at that demon, tell it that it’s an asshole, and use that as the fuel for moving through the experience or finding the item or completing the objective. And the beautiful thing is, at least in my experience and kinda like Ellen Ripely as a character, you and the bumps in the night probably know you’re still really scared. You’re just not letting that stop you from doing what needs done and/or surviving it all. Deep down, your fear may not disappear but you’ll feel a sense of personal satisfaction from being personally brave. You looked it into the eyes of fear, faced it, and walked away. And THAT is also a powerful tool and appeal of horror games. They let you feel brave. Not fearless.

[@stevejakab274]

"Susan says don't get scared, get angry." -on dealing with monsters, from Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

[@ZeMovinPixxle]

holy shit, this looks so much more competently made than all that streamer bait horror stuff. im amazed at the amount of well constructed scares.

[@wureviews69420]

It's an actual game with a gameplay loop as well which is way more than you get from most indie horrors

[@headphonic8]

This looks exactly like streamer bait horror. A bunch of startling jump scares

[@samlipton7872]

This was fantastic - I don’t think I’d be able to handle this game for an extended period of time, but the intensity and playfulness of the scares looks really well done

[@VashdaCrash]

I think the key to overcome guilt and remorse is to become compassionate and forgiving, and you can learn that by looking at other's stories like this one (the game's protagonists, I mean).

[@Vikom07]

I agree, this kind of horror is the real one - there's a danger, you can't see it, you can't touch it but it can see you and touch you. When I was a kid, I was playing GTA San Andreas and I was super scared by the leatherface myth. Even now, after many years, in that game I don't like being in the woods at night and I swear I had at least two dreams about playing the game and being chased by him. The fear of unseen, that's the real horror in games and movies. Not jumpscares or disgusting brutality.

[@Skenel]

Gotta say. You totally nailed the ending. Gosh, happy Halloween indeed.

[@blindpringles]

4:15 that actually is completely normal. We don;t wait to embalm the bodies the sooner the better. Rain sleet or snow I'm embalming that body within 2 hours. I'm a mortician. As you might have assumed this game is a pretty piss poor example of my field. Pretty much everything but the mouth and eye closure is wrong. There have been 2 mortician video games and both of them clearly have no idea what a mortician actually does.

[@weirdautumn]

I did not expect the Evil Dead vibes this game has and I loved it! The possessed talks and taunts you like deadites, the demon behaviour and overall tactics are similar to Kandarian demon's. Some scripted moments reminds the scenes from Evil Dead as well.

[@Artersa]

I always thought an Evil Dead game like this would be amazing. Something that really taps into the horrors of ED1.

[@graefx]

You always have such great picks and games but this one is just brilliant. I really enjoy the feeling Del Toro describes as dread or spooky mind bending stuff. But I'm right there with you with this style. Its the unknown and the way your mind races to what that thing standing in the corner might do or racing around trying to find and confront something that isnt there. I kept drifting my phone away from my face and tilting it to obscuring viewing angles at times. This type of horror usually needs to be such a curated experience to hit the beats at the right time that this being a tuned algorithm is doubly impressive. All wrapped up in a gameplay loop that's reminiscent of FNAF. Like I said, simply brilliant.

[@TheRabidOgre]

Honestly, most of what you said about the horror here is why I initially liked Phasmophobia. It didn't have anywhere near as much variety as this game, but it took place in normal locations and, outside of the Hunt, the scares are simple things like lights flickering or the ghost appearing for an instant from afar. Unfortunately, especially after the dev team expanded, they seem to be moving further away from that instead of fleshing it out. The Asylum was recently revamped to now include constant phantom screaming, fresh blood stains everywhere, and stashed corpses that are attracting flies, despite still being said to be a long-abandoned location. Also, they've been making it a lot harder to tell the difference between a Hunt and other ghost events, which takes away some player agency and ups the "monster chasing you" aspect even when it's not actually happening. I'm honestly kind of devastated.

[@kripposoft]

Oh man I loved paranormal activity when it came out. First scary movie in forever that actually SCARED me, not just startle with jumpscares.

[@Jekyllstein_Gray]

For 6 months after watching that, I was scared of walking in a house at night.

[@jmarra07]

Are you scared of your own shadow as well? Who the hell finds Paranormal Activity scary?

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

Paranormal Activity is a weird film because it's a horror masterpiece during the nighttime scenes and an annoying slog during the daytime scenes. The tension and dread in the first movie are utterly gripping, but when the sun comes up all you're left with are INFURIATING characters saying stupid things. I still get anxious wondering if my wife stares at me for hours while I sleep, but you'd have to pay me money to sit through the dialogue again lol

[@jmarra07]

@@QuintessentialWalrus Not a single thing about the day or night scenes was tense or scary, at all. They try, and I guess some people fell for it, but it's such a tedious nothing of a movie

[@kripposoft]

@@jmarra07 When it came out it was very unique in the way it told it's story. Back then misdirects combined with LOUD NOISES (jumpscares) was pretty much the only thing that were supposedly "scary" about scary movies. So watching Paranormal Activity was a very fresh experience where you kept waiting for something to pop out and scare you but it never really happened. It just kept the tension up throughout the movie. Also it helped watching it alone in a dark room in the middle of the night (watching scary movies at a theater often ruins it for me, because of all the people usually giggling after they get startled)

[@TheGlenn8]

Totally agree on ghosts being scary in a way physical monsters just aren't. Mr.Zombie, Mrs.Vampire, Madam Alien, and Sir Mass-of-writing-limbs-beyond-time all drop dead when I introduce them to mister shotgun or miss flamethrower. But when a ghost/demon shows up I'm basically fucked and have to just hope there is something I can do to stop it that hopefully doesn't involve the sands of the Sahara desert mixed with goats blood and the sweat of an angel's left ball.

[@alexscriabin]

Thank you for the jumpscare and flashing light content warnings!

[@coalburn7916]

Feels good to see an essayist I respect echo my own thoughts on the horror genre. "If it bleeds, we can kill it." It's the reason slasher movies have never really scared me. Movies about demons, or even aliens? The incomprehensible, the untouchable? That's the shit that gets me.

[@stevejakab274]

Depending on the story/game, even demons and monsters can be killed. After all, who you gonna call?

[@cakeworkorange]

genuinely scary game and u make it scarier with ur video. awesome

[@ProUnderachiever]

I'm a coward and will never play this game but great review! I can't imagine how terrifying it was to find that ghost in the footage when you didn't notice it during your playthrough.

[@okawesome2746]

Haven't watched yet but I wanted to say that your halloween/spooky game videos are some of my favorites on your channel. Thank you so much for getting two out for halloween!

[@derekcampbell2132]

I always forget that you do Halloween themed videos until I see them and then I get immediately excited.

[@zoidsfan12]

This game has the kind of horror that gets to me. Psychological horror is the only type which effects me, anything with monsters I can understand in some way doesn't. Because for me I can fight whatever it is, but horror like this where you can't even begin to understand if what you are seeing is really there, that gets me.

[@TheChris2RC]

Let's get it!!! Edit: Oh no, should have taken the warning more seriously

[@mesiagamer5217]

Honestly everyone has their preference for what scares them proper.

[@matthieurheaume]

Incredible work, i felt literally sick about how disturbed by your framing, editing, the game, etc. 😊

[@SilverKappa]

"Hell yes!" "No." "No?" "No. Hell?" "...yes." This actually hits on a bit of my personal philosophy: A threat I can punch is not a scary threat. The demons in this game are a step in the right direction, but there's still an animus behind them, some kind of will that can be defied and defeated. You wanna know what's really scary? Mindless horrors. Natural disasters or creatures that can't think in a way we would understand thought. You can't fight them, can't reason with them - all you can do is run, hide, or die. Yes, I live in hurricane territory, what of it?

[@QuintessentialWalrus]

I'm not as steadfast as you but this is the reason I'm significantly more scared of supernatural threats in fiction. People and bears and sharks are much more likely to kill me in real life than ghosts, but if ghosts or zombies or demons were real, it would shatter my worldview AND force me to try defending myself from something that might be unstoppable. No thanks! You can also do a lot more interesting things in fiction with a supernatural threat, so it gets my imagination working too.

[@pedroscoponi4905]

Some demons in stories can fall more in that incomprehensible direction. Specially if you take the time to establish that "your soul" isn't a thing the devil "values" - or maybe even think _exists._ If there is a reason for them tormenting you, it's certainly not apparent.

[@TheGlooga]

Christmas in October!

[@XSunpawX]

yes!! been following errant signal for years, first time i’ve been anticipating the halloween episode! yesssss

[@Louiseatrismegistus]

“Wants your soul. Soul. Soul.Soul.” Man I love this remix

[@brentbuckalew5131]

Loved watching someone play this game. Could never play it myself.

[@Paperlanty]

hahaha, I took your warning seriously and only watched it after sleeping, WHAT A SPOOKY GAME great video again!!

[@MrMoshmuma]

Love your stuff :) Always a treat when a new video comes up. I had loads of fun with this game, creepiest game i've played in a long time.

[@djbeema]

I'm so delighted to have two new videos from you back to back!

[@owaingray3480]

Errant Signal videos are like buses: you wait around for ages, then two come at once!

[@daverichardhadley]

Too scary for me to play. I'm genuinely terrified just watching this video essay. Though I like the idea of a (totally non-spooky) Mortuary Assistant Job simulator game.

[@Pwner45]

love the style and hope you get so many more views & subscribers. keep up the good work man.

[@Mordalon]

Things watching me that I can't see is also especially scary to me, but one step further that I've had multiple nightmares about is hiding from something or looking at something from a distance and the thing suddenly looks at me.

[@Semicolon42]

I'm getting scared just watching your footage. Damn this game is good with my kind of horror!

[@Ferdinand208]

You have one of the best gaming channels. Weird how you have so few subscribers. I wish you great success.

[@fortunatesoul12]

It looks like the scares also work for me because I had to pause the video a bunch of times, nice editing

[@n00dles4]

Great video man, it's good to see you still making videos!!! Been watching for a super long time and your critiques are always top-tier

[@Ikcatcher]

Five Nights at The Mortuary

[@Artersa]

Your Halloween content is my favorite KZbin stuff every year! So glad to get two uploads in a day!

[@Hel1mutt]

You spoil us! two videos in one day? very nice of you!

[@cwall1992]

Ngl I get excited for Halloween because of these videos

[@BubblegumCrash332]

The Shinning is the scariest film ever made and yet some people watch it and said nothing was scary. People are funny like that

[@stevejakab274]

Unfortunately a lot of people have been trained to think "horror" is jump scares and gore. Subtle horror is lost on them. Of course, jump scares and gore can be fun too.

[@COLDCHEMICALpresents]

I absolutely love your Halloween videos Errant. I look forward to them every year!

[@put1996]

Maybe I played too much DOOM, but now everytime I see demonic incursion my first instinctual thought was "stop screaming and grab a shotgun you idiot, all problem can be solved with holy superior firepower."

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

This video is officially certified by the Recommending Ones & Zeros.

[@Guruc13]

Eric Andre seems like he'd work here. A body arches its back and begins speaking in tongues, and he just shakes his head at you apologetically. "Yeahhh... we got a *real* problem. Haven't got that fixed."

[@TheKarishi]

When I look at Phasmophobia and I see someone getting the ghost caught on the geometry of the dining table so they can escape I get the sense that it's fallen prey to the core of why horror games lose their edge. You have to learn the mechanics in order to play but your comprehension and the level to which you can be scared are almost directly inverse by nature. And sometimes just the attempt to nail your mastery causes you to, like, trick yourself out of being scared of the game anymore, if that makes sense? I feel like there's a certain breed of Phasmophobia player who encounters a creaking door and is like, "Ah, okay, can't be one of these, we've got it down to six ghost types left..." and where The Mortuary Assistant's distractions exist to prime you for your next scare, the direct interaction between the type of distraction and the objective makes it so in Phasmophobia you're distracted From the scare By the scare. Also, the scariest part to me - the loss of self - is on its most blatant display if you try to just bail like a rational person the second you get hold of the key to the building. Markiplier attempted this in his playthrough, and the acting as she basically talks herself out of leaving and you as the viewer are VERY clear she's not the one who really made the decision (because Mark didn't) is genuinely chilling.

[@sharkofjoy]

Thank you for making these videos! I love them.

[@AnacondaHL]

I'm with you on this one, this kind of horror is great and gets to me!

[@davyhotch]

Chris lists Halloween entities that would beat him in a fight and also the guy from wu-tang clan?

[@gonxaa]

Two videos in a day? you spoil us.

[@TalenLee]

Yo, this looks great and you did a great job explaining it.

[@jamescalvert4471]

Happy Halloween. Great recomendation. Can't wait to play it.

[@SirLaguna]

This looks absolutely great. But I'm too scared to play it.

[@VZed]

Well... you might have just put what I'm scared of into words for me... and... gosh this VIDEO freaked me out.

[@diale13]

2 videos? You are spoiling us

[@mau2074]

2 videos on the same day!!!

[@InsrtCoins]

Wonderful video. Fascinating topic and delivered very well.

[@kanera_2495]

merry xmas everyone, we've got 2 in a day, it can't get better than this!

[@Zshugost]

as one of my former colleagues used to say: "i'm not scared of the living, i can stab the living, you can't stab a ghost".

[@joshhill2035]

OH BOY OH BOY TIME FOR ROUND TWO FOR THE DAY

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

Two videos in 3 hours? Magic

[@BewbsOP]

Two errant signal videos in one day!?

[@No20six]

I see Errant Signal, I press like.

[@KristofDE]

Hey, algorithm, dig this.

[@TheFreakDownStreet]

Woo! Spooky vid for Halloween

[@cinebst]

great spooky game, glad it's getting more love

[@headphonic8]

The thing that makes this kind of horror much less scary for me, is that I'm left wondering "well if those evil spirits can throw things and appear next to me, why haven't they just killed me yet?" And most of the horrific visions sort of just amount to jumpscares.

[@linaskvedaras]

My headcanon is that they want to torture you, weaken you mentally to be susceptible to a possession. Demon can twist your neck and kill you but they can't corrupt and claim your soul since you are psychologically intact.

[@Jetsetlemming]

Which this game handily answers: "they don't want to kill you, they want to own you".

[@KristofDE]

If a demon is malicious and enjoys causing suffering, why cut its fun short by going all out?

[@headphonic8]

@@Jetsetlemming Then why are they just sitting around attempting jumpscares for no reason? it's too performative and lacking in real motivation. if they can at least conjure much more maddening and continuously scary hallucinations than a couple of brief jump scares, then it might be more interesting. all these other jump scares are just played out clichés

[@headphonic8]

@@KristofDE that's bond villain logic though. wasting time to let the protagonist get away free is silly

[@erinw1566]

i hate horror games. i'm already anxious by default, i can't stand the intensity of it and i hate constantly getting jerked into fight-or-flight mode. i mostly watch videos like these out of curiosity over what other people see in them. but that vision in the shortening hallway near the end was one of the few times i've seen a horror game covered and gone "holy SHIT that was cool i gotta play this." honestly the fact that there's no invincible monster threatening to instantly death-by-jumpscare you makes it a lot more approachable to people like me

[@ericle6735]

I can't handle horror games either, and I just don't care for halloween and horror content in general, so most horror games alienate me. I know I'll never play this game but I'm glad this video exists so I can still appreciate it. That said, I have found a few horror games that I actually can enjoy, ones that don't rely on loud noises and jumpscares and that don't focus on triggering fight-or-flight responses. Top of my list would be Darkwood and Silent Hill 2. Both of which are more interested in keeping you wary of threats and desperate for resources than in actively scaring you, though scares do still occur without feeling forced. Inscryption also has a great, mellowed horror atmosphere for the 40% of the time it's actually trying to be scary.

[@TheJakeSweede]

Im kind of the same way. Alien, and Predator, while having scary parts, are overall not close to as scary as they are cool. Ghosts and hauntings, the supernatural is more scary. However, there is a type of "scare" that very few movies, or media in general has made me feel, but i have felt it while watching some movies. Not sure how i would describe it, other than a type of "brain wash" scare. Essentially you witness something horrible, but the idea of commiting the horrible act yourself towards someone else creeps into your brain for some reason, and you feel disgust.

[@bigblueshoe777]

This looks like the scariest game I've ever seen.

[@robertdochter277]

The games story and visuals remind me of the film, The Autopsy of Jane Doe. I mean that as a compliment too.

[@willmakesfilms]

For a second I thought this was that movie about the two guys doing an autopsy of a cursed body. Jane Doe maybe ?

[@stevejakab274]

For a serious look at working at a mortuary, check out A Mortician's Tale. No scares, just running the business of dealing with people's remains. It can be finished in an hour or two.

[@qiop1231]

Sometimes they do

[@charlescrawford4016]

Yes, love these!

[@colinsmith929]

This is one of those games I want to play but know I could never do it. Like if I am playing something Outlast I know as I move forward there are spooks, but if I just decide to not and linger around looking for batteries or whatever resource then the game will twiddle its thumbs waiting for me to continue. Games like this there is no traditional forward progression. Moving the camera around is forward progression. Also if I know the game isn't just waiting for me to hit a trigger but is actively working against me by like hunting me, like in Alien Isolation, and keeping track of what I do to disrupt me then I can't deal with that. So if I buy this game, I will have a playtime of 30minutes and it will sit in my steam library of games I wish I would just try to complete. But I won't. It's too spooky.

[@boateye]

Yaaas two signals

[@mantrox]

I'd love to see a proper Morgue Simulator kind of game. No horror, no silly stuff.

[@stevejakab274]

A Mortician's Tale

[@LoganCrazyBoy]

whoa, two in a day or did I click on a spooky ghost vid? lol

[@jmarra07]

Wait...I see this sometimes, but it never makes sense. You can't light ashes on fire. They're ashes. Already burned.

[@jcrebel18]

I was about to say good ending but it was the middle of the video.

[@finsonkaj]

Commenting for the algorithm. I was just looking at this game less than an hour ago and wondering if it would be a good spooky game to play for Halloween. I guess I'll find out XD

[@jmarra07]

Wow, 2 videos in one day. You spoil us normies sometimes

[@Arashmickey]

In a way this game reminds me of Life and Death 2: The Brain (1990). It's not a scary game, just an old surgery sim, but there were still scares when encountering complications that you hadn't or couldn't have sufficiently prepared for, and the anxiety of finding out whether you performed the diagnosis and operation correctly. The are a few countdown timers that could be remotely analogous to being chased by something dangerous, but other than that the nature of the scares feel similar to what I'm getting from this review of the Mortuary Assistant

[@p_ecora6647]

HOLY FUCK THERE'S ANOTHER

[@catgirlforeskin]

Two errant signal videos in one day? My cup runneth over

[@cyncynshop]

First night shift is not fun regardless of haunted happenings

[@lalapalooza6467]

This is my specific fear, I could not play this game