Mothered: A Role-Playing Horror Game Review (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Mothered: A Role-Playing Horror Game might live up to its word as a maternal tale of kookiness and ventriloquist-like fever dreams, but to call it a full-fledged horror game just doesn’t feel right here. Oh, it’s certainly creepy in that it bleeds low-poly bone marrow and nocturnal uncertainties, but that’s about as far as it dares to take its bouquet of weirdness. A horror game? No. A light point-and-click adventure with unintentionally eerie moments? Absolutely.

Without spiking the punch bowl and spoiling the taste of Mothered’s grease-addled gumbo, I will say this: Mothered is, in spite of its best efforts to stand tall as a relatively serious competitor in the horror sphere, a friggin’ strange game. It’s strange, not because it uses a dated aesthetic to weave its weirdness, but because it often feels like a game with one too many moving parts. It’s a chore core simulator, a visual novel, and an absurdly unsettling experience all bundled into the one stale cocktail. It is, for lack of a better description, a game that doesn’t shy away from unorthodoxy. And annoyingly, it works in its favor here.

The game takes place over seven long and grueling days. As the protagonist, you find yourself shackled to a seemingly mundane world in which your mother, being your primary carer as a result of a surgical operation, yanks the strings and, well, tells you what to do and how to spend each morning, afternoon, and evening. And to some extent, that’s all that Mothered is: a game in which you quite literally do as you’re told, not because you want to please your parent, but because you quite simply have nothing better to do. Picking red apples from the orchard, for example, is one of the chores that you have to bundle yourself into here. And frankly, it doesn’t get much more exciting than that.

It doesn’t take all that long for you to realize that things back home aren’t quite right. A mannequin-like mother greets you at the door, and then ushers you into a perpetual cycle of “normalcy.” The world is odd, as are most of the intricate details that sprawl out over the home and the several surrounding areas. But, as you have no control over your situation, you turn a blind eye to the blatant oddities and simply bend over backwards to accomplish whatever tasks that fall into your lap. It’s peculiar, messy, and just the slightest bit disturbing. Though, again, not exactly fodder for a smoking barrel of horror. Yet, we digress — because that’s what mother wants us to do, apparently.

As I mentioned earlier, Mothered takes place over seven days, with each day being made up of three time periods: Morning, Afternoon, and Night. In order to progress in the story, you need to complete chores for your mother, which primarily consists of fetching apples from the orchard, consuming meals, or simply answering the phone to your father, who, for some unknown reason, has no intention of picking you up until the week is over. You also have a brother who, again, has no intention of spending quality time with you; he prefers to remain hidden behind a bedroom door, weirdly. But then, it’s best not to ask questions in a game like Mothered. Things happen, and you just sort of roll with the punches.

A point-and-click game at heart, the gameplay mostly consists of swiveling between panels in the home and in the surrounding areas, and interacting with various objects. The orchard, for example, has fruit for you to pick—an act that, frustratingly, is a lot harder than it sounds, given the low-poly environment and the lack of options to alter the graphical interface. But then, all of this tends to come with the package. It’s ugly, but then, that’s sort of the point. Or at least I think it is.

Of course, horror fans are likely to struggle to find enough sweat-inducing thrills in Mothered. Granted, it is perfectly capable of making you feel uneasy, but given its lack of dopamine-fueled jump scares, it does come across as more of a creepy experience than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, it works at times, but to call it a full-fledged horror game wouldn’t be an appropriate description for what it truly is. It isn’t a role-playing game, either. Well, to tell a lie, it is in receipt of some light RPG elements, in that you level up as you progress through the story. But sadly, that’s about as deep as it goes.

All in all there’s a pretty average indie game here. Sure enough, it gets a lot things right, but at no point does it ever exceed its own limits to become a great game. To be honest, it sits somewhere in the middle, as something of an experimental horror and a light point-and-click adventure game. It doesn’t rattle your bones, and it definitely doesn’t pack enough of an emotional punch to get the waterworks flowing. Rather, it simply exists as its own self-contained cocoon of kookiness. To that end, I’d say that some people might enjoy it for the niche concept that it brings to the kitchen table. For those who want a proper horror game, though, it’s difficult to imagine that a game like Mothered will make you feel at home. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Verdict

Mothered: A Role-Playing Horror Game might fail to mince classic low-poly horror with a signature point-and-click twist, but for what it’s worth, it does make for one of the stranger games on the market. It might not be the most terrifying indie you’ll wrap your fingers around this year, but given its mannequin-like aesthetic and general sense of eeriness, it should give you just enough to write home about.

Arguably the worst thing you can do with a game like Mothered is build it up to be the be all, end all of psychological horrors. It isn’t. It’s strange, crooked, and above all, ridiculously shoddy. But that’s a love letter to PSX for you. Don’t expect a brilliant game here, because you won’t find one, basically.