Written by Johanna Kasurinen and made by the seven-person team of Swedish studio Wrong Organ, “Mouthwashing” is a story best left for you to experience, even from the first few minutes. But broadly speaking, it’s about survivors inside a crashed spaceship meant to deliver goods for an Amazon-like intergalactic service.

The capitalist critique, present in so much art, does not take center stage, nor does the game’s playfulness with the horror mascot subgenre, popularized by “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” Those tropes belie the character drama and what these five characters do to one another. Make no mistake, cold corporate capitalism still informs and sets the stage for the conflict. If apathy and negligence infect everything at every level, ships of all kinds will crash.

The game is essentially a first-person adventure novel as you navigate one of the shipmates throughout its late-’90s PlayStation polygon art style. Light and gory puzzles with navigation challenges make up “gameplay,” and a few end up feeling a little disruptive to the story, but never for too long. Focusing on a small cast with an economical narrative excited the team, said Kasurinen, Wrong Organ narrative designer and art lead, in an interview.

“What made ‘Mouthwashing’ an attractive idea for us right from my initial pitch was how it takes a very limited setting, characters, interactivity and then twists it out of shape as much as possible to create the unique aspect of it,” she said. “You experience the story almost like a puzzle itself.”

The game uses tools of cinema in a nonlinear narrative told through flashbacks and perspective changes among unreliable narrators. She’s right that the story is a puzzle, demanding players to be attentive listeners to the characters and the situation. The brilliance of this story is that, if you miss certain details, the game holds a mirror to you and leaves you questioning your own emotional intelligence.

Beyond cinematic tricks, the game’s low-polygon style opens the door for a dreamlike smearing of textures, color and shapes across your screen to reinforce a world of delusion and self-deception.

“We used a lot of the mechanics that are unique to video games to make it work. We leaned into the limitations of a low-poly game of this budget,” she said. “We’d always ask ourselves, ‘How can we use pretty mundane video gamey things, like the first-person POV, objective markers or datamoshing” — the technique that creates smeary, glitchy video effects — “to tell the story and underline the themes?’”

Since Halloween, the game has become a viral hit. It’s a testament to the game’s coherent writing and vivid visual metaphors that so many streamers and creators have understood its themes. There are also many players who miss the aforementioned details, inciting spirited debate and online arguments. The reception has far exceeded the team’s expectations.

“I would say the most surprising is the sheer power of fandom and its insane creativity. It’s such a powerhouse of both fun and extremely touching creations,” said Rita Lebedeva, founder of publisher Critical Reflex.

One question many streamers usually utter by the end of the experience: “What kind of people would make this kind of game?”

So I asked Kasurinen, who explained that the initial concept of the game was inspired by a previous project that “showed signs of collapsing” well before they killed it.

“It was that state of a team of people trying to convince ourselves, ‘We can still fix this if we just try harder,’ when everything was already limping and on fire, that eventually planted the seed,” she said. “It’s one thing to even try to pitch a horror game about mouthwash, but finding a group of talented people who are willing to take seemingly stupid ideas like that and fully commit to aiming for the jugular in terms of execution is when you know you’ve found something special.”

The game does indeed go for the jugular, and your heart will be bleeding out for weeks.

(Spoiler alert: The rest of this article discusses the specific characters and themes of “Mouthwashing.”)

“Mouthwashing” is a gantlet of emotional torment as it forces the audience to endure playing through the eyes and body of Jimmy, a manipulative narcissist who commits horrifying acts to other shipmates and absolves himself of any responsibility. Kasurinen said she sees many people talk about how “we all know a Jimmy,” and although she agrees with the sentiment, “the more interesting but challenging question is, ‘Can you see any of yourself in him?’”

“For myself, it’s definitely true,” she continued, adding that of course she hasn’t done anything close to what Jimmy does. “But I can certainly get pathetically jealous. I can get insecure and self-pitying to a vicious degree. I can act aggressive and defensive in the moment, then regret it the next day. Those are the kinds of awful, clinging emotions I wanted to explore with Jimmy. I always want to be writing about uncomfortable things, about aspects of myself or others that I find distressing, shameful, contradictory. Things that I think a lot of people can identify with but aren’t usually put into words.”

Then there’s the ship captain, Curly, the affable top-rated employee and longtime friend to Jimmy. He represents the enabler, someone who did not act, either out of cowardice or a lack of awareness. There is fiery online debate on Curly’s choices (here is one Reddit thread), in which some players have seen their own experiences.

“Curly represents the kind of good-intentioned downplaying that is unfortunately common but very human,” Kasurinen said. “In the real world, it can and does escalate to where people like him are defending perpetrators or use their power to cover up for misbehaving friends while still thinking they are doing a good, generous thing. ... Good intentions don’t mean a whole lot after the situation has already gotten massively out of hand.”

I proposed to Kasurinen that the game’s message seems to be, “Take responsibility.” The game itself blasts the two words in loud, bold text splashes across the screen. It’s a recurring “mission objective.” It’s what the audience, as Jimmy, fails to do.

She reminds me: There is another sentence that erupts in the player’s face like an alarm. Not an objective, just a hostile wish. “I hope this hurts.” The game begins with text setting the time and place of this tragic play, and then that phrase, so crude and direct: “I hope this hurts.” Who is saying this? It’s another detail up for debate. Kasurinen calls it the “instigating concept” of this cutting tale.

“At the risk of sounding pretentious, the medium is the message,” she said. “I hope certain people in the gaming industry play this game. I hope they see themselves. And I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts, hurts, hurts.”

Maybe that’s the only way to get through to some people. This game hurts because it understands your pain.