MOUTHWASHING Q&A: PART I. OVER 4K REVIEWS!!

25 Oct 2024Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Hi there!

First off, a huge thanks to all of you for the amazing support — MOUTHWASHING GOT OVER 4K REVIEWS, standing strong with a positive review rating (! overwhelmingly !) — it feels great to see how passionate and thoughtful the fandom has grown around our little Tulpar crew.

To show our appreciation, we wanted to answer as many questions as possible. So, there’s going to be not just one but three parts to our Q&A posts! If you haven’t seen your question answered yet, it might be coming up in the next post — keep an eye out 👁

Aaand as nothing makes our hearts beat faster than seeing more fan arts, memes and edits, we want to share them with you too!

Use the #Mouthwashing hashtag, tag us @Wrong_Organ on Twitter, or post on Discord: Wrong Organ and CR Channel servers.

AND NOW, ONTO THE Q&A:

How long did it take you from start to finish to complete this game? How many people made it Roughly, the project took 15 months to make, but development on Mouthwashing wasn’t continuous. We started development with 5 people on the dev team initially, and grew to 7 people about halfway through.

When developing the narrative of the game, was the nonlinear story always the aim? Yeah, the story was planned from the beginning to be told non-linearly. Johanna came up with the overall story then placed all the plot beats and scenes onto post-it notes so we could visually see how and to when the jumps would happen, plus be able to move them around conveniently when stuff needed to be shuffled around. A lot of effort went into figuring out what character knows what at each moment in the game and even more critically what the player knows as well. Putting it all together was like a logic puzzle.

What is your main design philosophy for both games? Is there a style/tone you guys considered essential for it to be a wrong organ game! While we’re obviously not shy about tackling gruesome topics and imagery, we always try to have a variety of emotions in each game. We always want to be surprising, whether it’s the overall concept of a game or just a weird line of dialogue. The humor in both Mouthwashing and How Fish is Made is something we’d consider a key aspect of a Wrong Organ title. In the future even if we’re not making horror or story-driven games we still want the worlds and characters of all our games to be interesting with fun dialogue, strange concepts and lots of heart.

Can we expect any merchandise to be released for Mouthwashing soon? Can we expect any physical releases? We are looking into doing some physical merchandise for Mouthwashing. Exactly what and when isn’t confirmed yet, but hopefully soon we’ll have some more details!

mouthwashing, disco style

(via @SeanSketches, on Twitter)

How did this dev team start? Are you guys close or in different parts of the world? The studio started cause we all met in a Swedish game dev school called Futuregames. Several of us moved from different countries to study in Stockholm. We were all actually in the same class as we all picked to study game design specifically. It was after How Fish is Made (which initially was just a school project) and some other projects during school, that we decided to start Wrong Organ to keep making games together.

What were the inspirations for the main theme? Twin Peaks main theme and the Cannibal Holocaust theme song both inspired the main theme. That song is the only one not composed with a specific scene in mind, as it's supposed to convey the themes and overall mood of the game.

Is the dialogue in The Last One And Then Another canon to the story of Mouthwashing? Yup.

In the back of my mind, it's always there.

(via @Borcheim, on Twitter)

Are there any little fun facts about the characters? Jimmy was named after Lana Del Rey’s “A&W”. Swansea is a bit of a sneakerhead. He buys himself a new expensive pair every year to celebrate his soberversary. Daisuke really, really didn’t want to do the internship. His parents made him go because he’d been kind of aimless so far as a young adult. They thought it’d ultimately help him find his way in life, to have some time in a stricter environment and away from home. They were just worried for his future. When he does end up on the Tulpar, while at first anguished, he eventually decides to put on a brave face and try his best to make his parents proud. Anya has tried and failed to get into medical school eight times. She completed Pony Express provided nursing classes to qualify for her position on the Tulpar (valid ONLY on board Pony Express property and company jurisdiction) because she needed money so she could keep trying. She’s been reading a lot of books about psychology while on the Tulpar though... Curly was initially meant to have a British accent. Some remnants of it probably remain in the script.

What’s something that you’ve noticed people talk about after the game came out that the team didn't think would be a huge talking point/didnt think about? Jimmy’s line about cartoon horses wasn’t intended to be a reference to bronies. It was simply directed at Polle, we didn’t even make the connection until the game came out. Which feels silly in hindsight

Does Polle have hooves or fingers? Polle says: “What did you just ask me you little–”[ANSWER REDACTED BY THE PONY EXPRESS SHIPPING COMPANY]

What is the story behind Yimpy? Martin, our audio lead drew Yimpy during one meeting regarding what to put on the board in medical. He has no recollection of drawing him.