A Mortician's Tale - A death positive game

[Maligna]

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/entertainment/a-morticians-tale-death-positive-game-1.4364529

A Mortician's Tale was heavily influenced by the real-life story of Caitlin Doughty, an L.A.-based mortician and author who started the so-called death-positive movement, which aims to demystify and destigmatize discussions and cultural taboos surrounding death.

"The term death positivity sounds really weird, because it sounds like, 'Hey everybody! Let's be cheerful about death! Death is cool now!' But it's not that," says DaRienzo.

"It's not trying to erase feelings about grief or sadness or mourning someone. It's more about encouraging people to be open to having discussions about death, and exploring our thoughts and feelings about death."

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Just read this article highlighting this game. It looks really neat. Love the art style and I'm really interested if they can change my feelings about death.

Also, bonus points from me for their purple theme.

 

[Deleted member 5864]

I liked Giantbomb's quicklook of it, if you are curious about what you do in it.

 

[Maligna]

I liked Giantbomb's quicklook of it, if you are curious about what you do in it.

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Cool, thanks. I'll check this out!

 

[BluWacky]

I wanted to like this more than I actually did. While it was genuinely interesting to "do" the embalming process, for instance, it's an otherwise relatively mundane narrative experience; although the flavour text at the funerals and in the emails you read is well written and tells a complete narrative with clear characterisation, I couldn't help but feel like I wanted a bit more variety in the experience - to be honest, I wanted there to be more of a game in there.

I was bit unsure what to make of what seemed like a spin towards "death positivity" - the scare quotes are intentional - towards the end of the game. I have close relatives who earn a living because people die - not always pleasantly - and as such there's no real stigma attached to such things in my family; that's what I have assumed was the point here, too. However, the game takes a minor turn in some flavour text towards the end that felt a bit like it was taking a slightly different stance.