As the year comes to a close, MonsterVine celebrates the best gaming experiences of 2024 with our annual Best Of Awards. Each title chosen exemplifies excellence, pushing boundaries in gameplay, storytelling, or innovation.
In the fiercely competitive Indie category, Mouthwashing stood out as a haunting, thought-provoking masterpiece that delves into the darkest corners of humanity while maintaining a gripping, ethereal atmosphere. Here’s why our team crowned it the Best Indie Game of 2024.
Best Indie Game – Mouthwashing
James: Mouthwashing delivers an incredible and haunting story about five crew members on a longhaul spaceship, forced to coexist in a tiny space together. What impresses me most is the narrative, as it manages to be both incredibly engaging, while telling a horror story that has much to do with monstrous people as it does ethereal horror. It also doesn’t shy away from having clear and important messages about its horror and the systems in society that enable people to continuously make horror choices that destroy others, all the while convincing themselves that they are good people who have made mistakes. It’s biting, haunting, and downright upsetting is all the ways that great horror stories are.
Frank: Some of my favorite streaming moments from the past year came from the absolute gutpunch moments of realization in this game, you could see the wheels turning and the realization hit. Visually interesting, with a cast of characters that, for the most part, you just want to save and see them get their best outcome. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
