The Mortuary Assistant

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The Mortuary Assistant
MA Box Art
Developer(s)	DarkStone Digital
Publisher(s)	DreadXP
Director(s)
Producer(s)
Designer(s)
Programmer(s)
Artist(s)
Writer(s)
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	2 August 2022
Genre(s)	Horror
Mode(s)	Singleplayer
Cabinet
Arcade system
CPU
Sound
Display

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The Mortuary Assistant is a first-person horror game developed by solo developer Brian Clarke under his studio name DarkStone Digital and published by indie horror publisher DreadXP. The game focuses on two primary objectives: embalming dead bodies and identifying demonic entities. The game originally gained notoriety when the small prototype created in 2020 was played by many popular YouTube Creators such as Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Daz Black, and more. Following the popularity of the prototype, development began on the full version of the game leading to a Demo released in 2021 with the full game releasing on the Steam platform in August 2022. The game is best known for its unique subject matter, atmosphere, and replayability due to a system that provides a new play experiences every time.

Game play

The Mortuary Assistant is a first-person survival horror game. The player spends the game session (a single shift at night) performing embalming tasks on three dead bodies while experiencing a demonic possession. The player must correctly identify what demonic entity is attempting to possess them, which body the demon is inhabiting, and burn that body before possession takes hold and the game is lost. As possession progresses, haunting events become more and more aggressive starting out as subtle events such as random noises or manipulation of the environment ramping up to experiencing interactions with spirits and eventually leading into full hallucinations.

Embalming

The player must embalm each of the dead bodies in cold storage during their shift (play session). The player is able to review the steps of the embalming process on their clipboard which also tracks their progress. Embalming in The Mortuary Assistant attempts to stay true to the real-life process with alterations meant to cater to game design. The player must set facial features such as wiring the jaw and sealing the eyes shut, collect embalming chemicals, insert drainage tubes, perform cavity filling, and more. The process is tied in with the game's story requiring the player to use a special reagent during the embalming requiring the player to continue performing their embalming tasks while experiencing demonic events.

Possession

As the night progresses, the player falls deeper into possession causing a race against the clock to identify the demonic entity before it's too late. The further into possession the player is, the more aggressive the haunting events become. To help keep track of possession level, the player may scribble on a note pad to check how far along they are. The more altered the scribble is, the closer they are to losing the game. However, the deeper into possession the player is, the more the demon will make itself known aiding the player in identifying the entity. If the player becomes possessed, the game is over.

Demonic Sigils

Sigils are markings that represent the demon's name. Throughout the night, events will take place that cause the demon to inscribe it's sigils into the surrounding environment. The player must periodically wander the mortuary using an item called a Letting Strip to reveal them. Once the player has revealed the sigils, they can be looked up in the Night Shift database on the computer and the player may guess which demonic entity is present.

The Mark

A clay tablet designed to hold the four sigils of the demon's name. Once the player has guessed which demon is present, the sigils must be placed in the mark in the correct configuration. When the mark is complete, the player places it on the body believed to be housing the demon which will force the entity to become bound to that body allowing for it to be burned.

Burning The Body

Once the player is confident that they have identified the demon's name and which body is housing the demon; the player places the mark on the chosen body to bind the entity to it. With the mark in place, the player may wheel the body to the retort and burn it. If the player has chosen correctly, the demon will be banished back to hell and the game is won.

Development

The Mortuary Assistant was created by solo developer Brian Clarke over a two year development cycle. During a KickStarter in 2020 for his previous project Our Secret Below Brian released the original prototype for The Mortuary Assistant to help showcase the style of games he develops. The prototype was picked up by a large number of popular YouTubers thanks to it's unique subject matter and ambient setting. With the prototype becoming popular during the development of Our Secret Below, Brian began creating a more complete design document for the project. After completing and launching Our Secret Below in July of 2020, development began right away on the full game leading to a two year long development cycle.

Replayability

A core goal of The Mortuary Assistant design was to not be a single story-line experience to be played once but to be something players would want to revisit and experience over an over again even after all of the five endings were found. The desire for replayability resulted in the bulk of development being used to develop a unique event manager called the haunt system designed to deliver an unpredictable and different experience every time the player plays the game. The Mortuary Assistant delivers different experiences every shift with new story events that further flesh out the protagonists story as well as the story of the mortuary itself and its owner Raymond Delver, different haunting events and variants of events every time so no shift is the same, a different demon each shift as well as different bodies each time.

The Haunt System

The heart of the unique play experiences is the haunt system. Every new shift, a set of three new cadaver profiles are built, a new demon is chosen with a unique sigil configuration, and new story events are chosen. Story events are tracked to make sure that every new play session delivers new story until it has all be experienced. Once the new shift is setup and the game has started, the haunt system begins monitoring the player.

The haunt system holds over one hundred haunting events with more being developed for future patches. As the shift progresses the haunt system monitors the player and, based on various trigger states, will choose to fire an event. When an event fires, the haunt system will choose an appropriately sized event at random. The higher the players possession, the larger the event. Each event has a set of criteria that must be met by the player. If the player does not meet the requirements of the chosen event, the event is thrown back into the bucket to be used later and a new event is chosen.

Once an event is chosen, a series of sub-systems go to work to check things such as where the player is in the mortuary, where are they facing, what items they have, are the lights on or off, and many more. With this information, a variant of the chosen event will fire so event if an event is seen from a previous shift, it may not execute in the same location or way. Larger events also have reactionary systems to behave different ways based on player behavior. All of these systems working together create an unpredictable experience every shift.

References

This article "The Mortuary Assistant" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:The Mortuary Assistant. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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