The Mortuary Assistant sends you into a mortuary as a trainee, where more than just the dead are waiting at night. With it, DarkStone Digital created one of the best-known indie horror titles of recent years back in 2022. We take a look at why the game works so well and where it falls short.
Table of contents
Our rating in detail
Graphics: With its tiled rooms, cold light and detailed corpses, River Fields Mortuary feels oppressively real. For a game developed essentially by one person, it looks really good, though the animations and character models betray the smaller budget.
Gameplay: The idea is brilliant: you work through an embalming checklist while demons appear around you, and on the side you have to figure out which body is possessed. After a few shifts, though, the routine gets very repetitive, and the mechanic for identifying the demon is explained clumsily at first.
Story: The story of Rebecca Owens, her past and the secret of River Fields is told in fragments across several playthroughs. That makes you curious, but due to the random events, the story doesn't always come together coherently.
Depth: Multiple endings and random events make each shift play out a little differently. The pool of scares is limited, though, and after a few runs you'll know most of the scenes.
Tech: The requirements are low, and the game is Verified on Steam Deck. However, players have reported bugs since launch, including softlocks that force you to restart a shift.
Sound: The soundscape is the biggest strength: creaks, whispers and well-timed shocks regularly make you jump. With headphones, it's almost unbearable, in the best sense.
What is The Mortuary Assistant about?
You play Rebecca Owens, who has finished her mortuary science degree and is training at River Fields Mortuary. One night, she's called in to work to embalm several bodies. It quickly becomes clear that something is wrong with these dead, and that Rebecca can no longer leave the building.
How The Mortuary Assistant plays
In each shift, you prepare bodies step by step: examining them, sealing orifices, draining blood and filling them with embalming fluid. At the same time, you look for clues as to which body is possessed by the demon and what the demon's name is. In the end, you have to cremate the right body, or the demon takes possession of you.
According to the developers, there are more than ten hours of content. A single shift usually takes about one to two hours, and the different endings and story pieces only reveal themselves over several playthroughs.
Developer and publisher
The Mortuary Assistant was developed by DarkStone Digital, Brian Clarke's studio. It was published by DreadXP. On October 26, 2026, DarkStone also released a free horror game, Playable Archive.
Tech and system requirements
The Mortuary Assistant runs even on older PCs; according to Steam, a GeForce 960 and 4 GB of RAM are enough. You'll find all specs in the table below this article. The voice acting is in English, but German text and subtitles are available. On Steam Deck, the game is Verified.
What players on Steam say
On Steam, 92 percent of 4,843 user reviews are positive (“Very Positive”, as of October 27, 2026). Players particularly praise the atmosphere, the sound design and the scares. Criticism focuses on bugs, the repetitive routine and the clumsy explanation of the mechanics.
Official trailer
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System requirements (PC)
| Minimum | |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 7 or higher |
| Processor | 2 GHz or higher |
| graphics card | geforce 960 or higher |
| Memory | 4 GB RAM |
| storage | 4 GB available space |
