I have a weird... relationship with death and funerals, mostly due to my relationship with the deceased, the circumstances of their death and some other random factors that were at play during their funerals. It's not always easy to talk about them and I don't plan to do so here but I wanted to say this upfront because my experience playing the game was... calm and illuminating. A Mortician's Tale knows how to set its mood. The music and the art style worked wonderfully for making me feel this calm, which is a feat considering I can't normally go without at least tearing up when I think about these topics. With this game, instead, I was able to contemplate the topic calmly. I felt responsible for the grieving families almost. This last point actually was strained in one particular scenario which I won't elaborate for people who'd prefer to experience it themselves. (It's not a "spoiler", but just... a moment.)

I am thankful for the experience and the work that went into it, as well as all the information added about funeral processes. Green burials were an unrelated interest of mine for a while for a writing project, and it felt nice to hear more about it - and water cremation, oh dear. Definitely looking more into the latter, later.

One last note of acknowledgement for being sensitive about the topic of suicide. I've no personal hang-ups over it but I appreciated the game for being upfront about it and giving the player a choice not to play through the scenario of handling the funeral process of someone who died of suicide.