For a second, holding a golden necklace above the open mouth of the cremulator, I paused. But only for a second. The cremulator is essentially an extremely hardcore blender: it is used in the funeral business to grind any bone fragments that remain after the fires of cremation have flared and then dimmed. It is not meant to grind jewelry, but I imagine it could if pushed. Games are about messing with systems, aren't they? Narrative games in particular are about messing with systems that the designer has entrusted you with for the purpose of telling a story. I was not meant to grind the golden necklace. I was meant to place it inside the urn with the remains of its owner. And so of course for a second, I paused.
Only a second, though, and that's a testament to the power of A Mortician's Tale - and, perhaps, to the power of death itself. I blunder hilariously through games about alien wars and about chosen heroes embracing their destinies, but it turns out that if you chuck me something workaday and mild-mannered about real death, actual death, no-restarts-or-saves death, I become reverent. How could I grind the jewelry when I had just tended to the body of the jewelry's owner and respectfully committed it to the flames? How could I mangle this necklace when the family were next door waiting for me?
A Mortician's Tale is a gentle, largely undramatic game about a funeral home and the people who work in it. You arrive fresh from training and filled with a sober enthusiasm for the death industry. This is a mom-and-pop place, a small firm that gets things right when they matter most. You spend your day checking emails - from the hearse driver, who sees the funny side of things, from your best friend who has a new job in a faraway city and worries about you, from a mortuary mailing list you've been signed up to, and from your new boss who fills you in on the next task coming your way. And you prepare the dead, for the sealed coffin, for the open casket, for the furnace and the cremulator and the urn.
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