The Mortuary Assistant: Definitive Edition Review

The Mortuary Assistant: Definitive Edition is the console release for the terrifying horror walking simulator of the same title that was first released back in 2022. Developed by Brian Clarke’s Darkstone Digital and published by Dread XP, it’s a deep dive into the nightly routine of an embalmer who needs to complete her duties while staving off demons attempting to possess her.

And you thought your day job was bad.

You take on the role of Rebecca Owens who has been hired as an assistant to Raymond Delver, a proprietor of a mortuary where she will assist in embalming newly dead bodies. While being taught how to run the business, she witnesses some harrowing sights, which leads to her being locked inside the morgue on her first night.

Learning that demons are hunting her, she has a limited time frame to exorcise the demons hunting her while completing all her duties for the night. As she survives the night, she can also learn the secrets behind the mortuary and her mysterious boss, Raymond Delver himself.

Will you survive the night? Get those embalming tools ready and take on the role of The Mortuary Assistant!

The Dead Tell No Tales

The Mortuary Assistant is largely a horror walking simulator that’s very similar to Martha is Dead with the jump scares and timed components that can be compared to the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. What makes it stand out from the pack is how The Mortuary Assistant really focuses on the embalming aspect of its gameplay with its fleshed-out (heh) embalming component.

There is a detailed method to the embalming process, which is covered throughout its rigorous tutorial. Not only do you wheel out each cadaver to be processed, such meticulous detail is put into documenting distinguishing marks, and the grotesque process of prepping the corpse for the funeral. It’s so involved that there is an embalming mode similar to Coffee Talk’s barista mode if that is your thing.

The mode is so highly involved that it becomes uncomfortable at times when you sew the mouth and eyelids shut and even put on eye covers to hide the irises. Mixing the chemicals for the embalming process of draining the bodily fluids has been streamlined, but there’s quite a lot of attention to detail to make it a highly involved process.

When the actual gameplay loop for The Mortuary Assistant begins, there’s another aspect to the gameplay that was not introduced to you by your employer, which is that demons will be attempting to possess you through the night. Unlike the embalming process, this on-the-job training is something that you will have to learn by yourself.

And you don’t even get any hazard pay for this.

The exorcism process is just as involved as the embalming process, but for some reason, it blends quite well. Throughout the night, a demon will attempt to possess you, and you will need to find out the demon’s identity and its preferred body of choice. Once you have discerned the demon’s identity and its preferred skin suit, you will need to follow specific instructions before you can burn the body to fully exorcise the demon.

As the night progresses and you follow the process of embalming, the demon will play a lot of tricks on you in the form of endless jump scares. They are quite effective and are designed to get you flustered and throw you off your groove. Almost everything in the mortuary is fair game, and there are many moments that range from downright cheesy to profoundly terrifying.

So, you keep your wits about you and find the sigils that spell out the demon’s name using the tools at your disposal. Once you get all the components, all you will need to do is use the database on your PC to find the actual demon while discerning which body it prefers, which can be obvious or subtle depending on the demon at play. From there, you can use the mark and the bane fluid to bind the demon onto its preferred body to be burned at the crematorium. Thus completing the exorcism process.

This part of The Mortuary Assistant is timed and you can find out by scribbling on the notepad on your screen to see how close you are to the demon possessing you. The gameplay loop ends once you find the correct body and burn it or you run out of time and the demon finally possesses you. As the shift ends, you’re treated to one of the six endings available, and you get to do it all over again the following day!

Too bad, this job doesn’t give you a pizza party for your efforts.

DIY Exorcism

The Mortuary Assistant is an interesting premise on paper, and the first few rounds can be overwhelming due to the many components that you have to complete. It doesn’t help that I’ve played The Mortuary Assistant on the PS5 and it’s not exactly ported over well especially with its controls. Precisely moving the cursor to a specific item isn’t optimized, so there are moments when you will be literally grasping for straws with your controller.

There are still quite a bit of glitches and bugs in this build, most notably wall clipping. Another aspect that can get irritating is when you’re able to reveal glyphs for the demon’s name, these glyphs end up vanishing and reappearing at random. While I would like to say that it is a feature that allows for more of a challenge, it’s really a bug that could be patched in the future.

The Mortuary Assistant is best experienced on the PC or at least Nintendo Switch with a dedicated mouse function that allows you to precisely select the items on the screen. Using the right analog stick on your Dualsense feels quite clumsy and requires better calibration to get a smoother experience, which I feel makes the game more frustrating for console players.

While there are six endings to choose from, the first three are quite standard, while the latter requires specific conditions to be able to access them. This involves fully exploring every nook and cranny of both your apartment room and the mortuary to find their many secrets. This is where the issue lies for replay value in The Mortuary Assistant.

While there are many effective moments of terror, after a few loops, many of the moments become quite recycled and the jump scares lose their effect. It becomes more of an irritation especially because once you trigger these events, gameplay pauses as these moments of jump scares have to play out before continuing the game, which slows down momentum.

The Mortuary Assistant also becomes quite tedious after a while, especially with its embalming mechanic. In an effort to keep every playthrough fresh, your embalming tools as well as computer passwords are randomly rearranged every shift. While it was great for novelty the first few times, what it actually does is it becomes frustratingly repetitive as the order in which you embalm will never change.

To keep The Mortuary Assistant relevant to its time period of 1998, some mini-games keep to the period, such as the PC access along with its realistic dial-up load times. As identifying demon names as well as logging in the identity of the corpse are essential parts of the gameplay loop, it becomes unnecessarily tedious as it disrupts the general gameplay flow.

I feel that the best aspect of The Mortuary Assistant is its lore and story. As you progress through each night, you get to find out more about Rebecca’s backstory and her own demons so to speak that the actual demons use to fuck with your head. It establishes really great moments of terror and fantastic horror writing. It becomes especially relevant once you unlock each of the endings.

Mileage may vary for your long-term enjoyment of The Mortuary Assistant where each game loop lasts an average of an hour depending on how fast you complete each loop. You can get a good 8-12 hours of gameplay if you are attempting to find every ending and complete the story altogether.

Verdict: Wait For It…

The Mortuary Assistant is a treat for horror game fans who are looking for a good scare, especially for the first few loops of the game where there are moments of pure terror with its effective jump scares and interesting lore. However, your overall experience with The Mortuary Assistant is quite brief. Compounded with a clumsy port to consoles, it might be best to wait for a sale to experience its horrific story.

For the curious and diehard horror fans, The Mortuary Assistant is best experienced on a PC or the Nintendo Switch, as its controls are best suited for either a mouse and keyboard or a touchscreen for a smoother gameplay experience, as the controls on consoles such as the PlayStation and Xbox are a tad bit frustrating.

That being said, don’t sleep on this title if you want to experience a creative horror experience. As The Mortuary Assistant stands from the crowd with its effective scares, we can’t wait what its developers have in store for us for their future projects.

*The Mortuary Assistant has been reviewed on the PS5 with a review code provided by the publisher.