Video Game / The Mortuary Assistant

"First-day jitters" have never been quite this scary.

"We're caught at the front line of something larger, but I don't do this for some greater good. We either face it, or fall to it."

— Raymond Delver

The Mortuary Assistant is a horror video game developed by indie developer DarkStone Digital, published by DreadXP, and released on August 2nd, 2022.

Rebecca Owens gets invited to the River Fields Mortuary by Raymond Delver as part of her internship. However, after her first handling of the bodies, Rebecca suddenly gets called back in the middle of the night to take a sudden late night job at the mortuary. There's a grave reason as to why: one of the bodies has a demon that imprinted on her with the intent to take control, and Rebecca must go through the procedures to embalm, bind, and cremate the demon. It won't be easy however, the entity is slowly taking hold of Rebecca throughout, and subjecting her to various Hallucinations of corpses, monsters, and glimpses of the past.

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The Mortuary Assistant provides examples of the following tropes:

• Agent Mulder: Rebecca's grandmother gets worried when she hears Rebecca found her first mortician job at River Fields, implying she heard of stories of what happened to the previous people that worked there.
• Agent Scully:
  • Right in the prologue, Rebecca brushes off her grandmother's worries about the rumors surrounding the River Fields Mortuary, claiming them as stories people make up to deal with the trauma of death. She soon discovers they aren't just stories.
  • Raymond comes off as one during Rebecca's first day or the tutorial when signs of a haunting are evident, such as attributing the window slamming due to poor latches, bottles thrown being blamed on poorly stored chemicals acting up. Averted on the following first night where he shows that he is aware of the existence of demons and immediately informs Rebecca of the danger she is facing and gives her tips and the tools needed to help her survive the night.
• Broken Bird: Rebecca starts off as one, and her traumatic backstory is expanded upon throughout the game. Her mother was a drug addict who died of an overdose. Then as a teenager, Rebecca ran away from home and became addicted to heroin. However, she overdosed as well one night and wound up at the bottom of a steep drop. Her father found her, but slipped and fell while trying to rescue her, causing his own death. Rebecca has blamed herself for his death ever since. While attending her state-appointed rehab, she attempted suicide but survived. Throughout the night, the demon repeatedly plays on Rebecca's belief that she deserved to die instead of her father.
• Buried Alive: One of the Delusions has Rebecca going to a basement and finding a grave, only to be shoved in. When she looks up, she sees Raymond apologizing and burying her alive... Before the Delusion clears with Rebecca outside the mortuary.
• Closed Circle: When Rebecca attempts to flee the mortuary, she is prevented by the demon who compels her to go back to work. Her car also doesn't start, presumably due to the demon and also ensuring that Rebecca stays at the mortuary.
• Co-Dragons: The Mimic, Shadow Man, and Woman in White are this for the Demon, being lesser spirits it has formed a bond with to gain more power, as well as harassing Rebecca through her shift in more direct ways than the Demon.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Raymond is subject to having his body contort into a pretzel shape courtesy of the Demon's telekinesis in the Possessed Ending.
• Daddy's Girl: While Rebecca is implied to resent her late drug addict mother, Rebecca was in far better terms with her father, whom she was very close to. In the present day, Rebecca is tormented by guilt over her father's death, whom she feels responsible over.
• Dare to Be Badass: Raymond caps off his speech in the first good ending by encouraging Rebecca to stay on with the mortuary and learn how to deal with the demons.
  "It's not a life I would want for anyone. But choosing between a life of fear or control... You're the first person I've met to face this hell and survive. So I'm offering you a different kind of job. Work the night shift. Learn what I know. Give yourself a chance at a life beyond fear. I don't know what you experienced, but I know it uses the worst parts of you against yourself. The more you experience, the more you'll confront the darkest parts of your life. But through it, you'll become unbreakable. I'm offering the tools to take control. The choice is yours. I hope you come back."
• Easter Egg: If you check the inventory during a Delusion sequence, the screen will instead showcase another image entirely, including a demonic sigil you'll see on the notepad when Rebecca is on the edge of possession, and an error message of the "asking you to die" variety.
• Evil Laugh: The Demon has a blast making these while tormenting Rebecca during her shift, mostly when he takes the form of her grandma stabbing her.
• Evil Old Folks: One of the forms the Demon uses to torment Rebecca is her sweet grandmother. This incarnation of her however can go as far as stabbing her repeatedly during a specific delusion.
• Evil Phone:
  • One of the things the demon is capable of is calling on the phone. Answering it results in Rebecca's voice coming out of the speaker, asking why you're still alive.
  • A variant happens with the tutorial tapes, which normally plays the recording of Raymond giving advice on the Demonic Possession process and how to bind the demon to the body, will on rare occasions have the demon speak to you through a distorted voice of Rebecca, with threats of a painful death.
• First-Name Basis: After banishing a demon for the first time, Raymond asks Rebecca to just call him by his first name rather than "Mr. Delver".
  • Twisted in the "Possession" Ending: Rebecca simply calls him Raymond and he playfully admits that perhaps switching to first names is fine after that night. Only to realize that the name was the clue that he is talking to someone that knows him for far longer than Rebecca ever did.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first good ending, Raymond remarks that he'd hardly call his actions selfless, wishing he could claim to be someone better. As he's using the blood of a live possessed human to supply the Reagent for the binding, using them instead of putting them out of their misery, he falls into a Necessary Evil role to prevent further possessed individuals.
  • One of the easier to miss details in either of the Game Overs is the coffin at the other end of the room as Rebecca's getting imprisoned into one. In the Basement Ending, we learn/see what's in the other coffin, as well as the implications as to what the Possessed Rebecca gets subject to.
  • One of the delusions features a tape player of Raymond asking the listener to kill him on sight, followed by other demonic voices that drown him out. This same tape can be found in the basement, this time without the demonic voice that allows for more clarity; detailing his struggle with Demonic Possession one shift, asking those that find the tape to kill him and the other possessed in the basement.
• Forever War: Raymond is heavily implied to be engaged in one against the demonic forces, and Rebecca quickly gets stuck with him.
• Gameplay Randomization: Every scare and Delusion in every shift is completely randomized, practically guaranteeing that you will never be safe when you work.
• Hates Their Parent: Implied, at least with Rebecca's mother. When reliving how she found her mother's body in a Delusion, Rebecca spits "You stupid bitch!" at her mother's corpse. This makes sense when you learn that her mother was an addict who died of a drug overdose, and Rebecca probably feels some lingering resentment towards her for this incident.
• Hope Spot: The outcome of the Possessed Ending. At first, it appeared the demon had been successfully cremated, and Raymond greets you in the same manner as if you had achieved the success-related endings. But then Rebecca makes a strangely blissful comment to indicate she isn't really there, which is followed by Raymond getting killed via demonic psychokinesis.
• Humanoid Abomination: Despite being human in shape, the Mimic is very obviously not a person, with its white, stone-like skin, lidless eyes, exposed teeth with black gums, and a tendency to appear out of thin air.
• I Have Many Names: Like most things in the game, the Demon has a randomly selected name from a list of 12, discovering its name is key to defeating it.
• Interface Screw: When Rebecca is due for a hallucination or delusion, the edges of the camera become fuzzier and the colors in the edges of Rebecca's vision become desaturated.
• Jump Scare: Like many horror games, there are a lot of Jump Scares, and they can happen completely at random.
• Mind Rape: The Demon's modus operandi, while it can't physically harm anyone, at least not without a vessel, it can create Delusions of Rebecca's past to torment her.
• Multiple Endings: Five possible endings depending on the outcome of the night and the secrets discovered:
  • First Good Ending: Successfully banish a demon for the first time. Rebecca is then greeted by Raymond in the morning, who informs her that because an entity found her, they will keep coming back to find her. All Rebecca can do is make a choice: live a life of fear by running away, or take control and continue working the night shift.
  • Standard Good Ending: Successfully banish a demon after the first. Rebecca will ask Raymond if their ordeal will ever end, and he admits that he highly doubts it, as he's been doing this for years and has yet to find an out.
  • Bad Ending: Either burn the wrong body or use the incorrect sigils. At first it plays out like a Standard/Good Ending, except Rebecca is eerily calm, with her comment on "waiting for so long" cluing both you and Raymond that the Demonic Possession is successful, followed by the demon subjecting him to a psychokinetic death.
  • Basement Ending: Get into the basement hatch outside the mortuary by unlocking it with a stored away key. Type the code "197044", given by several Delusion sequences (The blood bucket sequence with "____44" on the wall, the Rebecca pointing to a "1970" photo in the mirror, etc), into the keypad hidden in a cabinet to obtain the key to the lock. In the basement you find Raymond's journals that detail his experience with demons, including all the knowledge he obtained to be rid of them. One detail includes how the very next door featuring a live possessed woman named Vallery as the source for the blood. The following morning (after a successful banishing) has Rebecca call out the old man for effectively imprisoning a live human in the basement, who reaffirms his decision is for the sake of preventing further death, recounting his memories of seeing similar possessed getting degraded until they're dealt with.
  • Closure Ending: Grab the Sobriety Coins and Necklace in Rebecca's apartment. Find a Delusion that features the hanging Rebecca, and put the two coins in her hands, or find a Delusion that replaces the cadaver you're working on with her father's body and put the necklace on him. After burning the embalmed demon's body, Rebecca meets with her dead father, who comforts her and reassures that she's not to blame for everything that went wrong with both him and her mother.
  • The House of Delver: This ending was added in June 2023 after the game's release: This is obtained by reaching the basement and finding Vallery's coffin, but instead taking her mark and burning the correct demon's body with it, then replacing a fuse and getting some bolt cutters to free Vallery. The possessed Vallery mocks Rebecca's stupidity and attacks her, only to be rescued by Raymond. Vallery attacks Raymond and rips open his shirt, exposing a symbolic tattoo on his chest. Vallery escapes. Rebecca apologizes, but she and Raymond argue. She leaves, and then Raymond heads deeper into the basement to find a possessed woman shackled to a wall. Raymond removes his shirt, cuts a piece of flesh from the woman, and repairs the sigil on his chest while the demon taunts him.
• My Greatest Failure: Rebecca is still haunted to this day by her father's death, which she feels responsible for. It's something the demon torments her with during the night.
• Necessarily Evil: Raymond's been keeping a live possessed human as a source for the Reagent, in order to bind the demons to the dead bodies. While Rebecca calls him out as sick and inhumane for effectively keeping them alive instead of Mercy Killing them, Raymond doesn't sugarcoat how immoral or how essential his actions are, outright describing it as a necessary evil to deal with the inevitable demons to come.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: During the cellar Delusion, the Mimic hides among the various statues present during the Delusion, moving only when Rebecca gets to close to it.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Averted. The Demon almost never makes a direct appearance and can't harm Rebecca like the Woman in White can, but due to its hallucinations that slowly drive Rebecca insane so it can possess her, it's just as dangerous.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Burn a body without properly embalming all three cadavers and Rebecca collapses. The following morning Raymond has locked up Rebecca in the basement opposite of the coffin there already, while giving a look of disappointment . Like the other standard Game Over, it's not considered a separate ending on its own.
• No OSHA Compliance: You handle dangerous embalming chemicals with no protective gear, no eyewash stations, and no ventilation. This video goes into full detail on the violations.
• Out-of-Character Alert: One delusion has Rebecca seeing what appears to be her kind and supportive grandmother at the window of the embalming room, telling her to let her in. When Rebecca, who was plagued by various other delusions, doesn't listen, the "grandmother" bangs on the glass and snarls "Let me in, you little bitch!"
• Papa Wolf: Played for Drama. A flashback showcases Rebecca's father died trying to save her while she was overdosing down a ravine.
• Precision F-Strike: In one of the videos demonstrating on how to determine if a cadaver is possessed by a demon, the cameraman lets one out after seeing the cadaver he is observing twitches.
• Raised by Grandparents: After her parents' death, Rebecca was put under the care of her grandmother.
• Recovered Addict: Rebecca almost lost her life to a heroin addiction, which she recovered from and has been sober for the past 10 years.
• Sanity Meter: The Demon will slowly possess Rebecca throughout her shift, subjecting her to various delusions and nightmarish sequences to speed up that process. While not directly measured, Rebecca is advised to check how far the possession has gone by scribbling in her notepad; different scribbles for each sanity level.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Rebecca's immediate reaction to the first unquestionably demonic event. She doesn't get far before the demonic voice in her head forced her to stay.
  "Nope! Nope. New job... I'm getting out of here."
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • The demon entities threaten their victims with gruesome ways to kill them, along with many curse words.
  • Rebecca has her moments, but considering the situation she finds herself in, no one can blame her for her use of bad language.
• Spanner in the Works: Since every shift in The Mortuary Assistant is timed, the faster you get at embalming, the more time you have for demon hunting. An update to the game helpfully randomizes the location of your embalming tools after you complete your first shift, forcing you to learn their locations all over again every shift thereafter. The in-game explanation is that Zoey, the resident Ditzy Secretary, has become an Unwitting Instigator of Doom because she can't understand Raymond's instructions for restocking things, and he keeps mispronouncing her name.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The Mimic frequently appears out of nowhere and disappears when looked at with alarming frequency.
• Surprise Santa Encounter: In the Holiday update, one of the bodies Rebecca can embalm is old St. Nick himself.
• Timed Mission: Every shift is a race against the clock before the Demon possesses Rebecca, who must find the possessed body and go through the steps of embalming to prepare it for cremation. Run out the hidden timer, and Rebecca suffers Demonic Possession.
• Workplace Horror: You must do your job of preparing corpses for their funerals while discovering which one is possessed by a demon, and then uncovering which one it may be and how to subdue it. If you manage to survive the night, your boss tells you that he regrets forcing you into this course of life, but it's not something you can just walk away from.

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