Hello! Welcome to Chalfont, Chalfont, and Chalfont, Incorporated. We've been waiting for you- the temp agency that sent you here must've told you what we expect from our employees, right? Good! That means we don't need to waste time training you. Though... that outfit looks nice, and that's a really nice haircut, it doesn't suit the professional air we're trying to give our customers. Now, if you can just give me your name, and I mean your ''legal'' name, on your birth certificate, I can give you your employee ID, and we can get you started on your first day! Don't worry, we'll call you by your preferred name, we just need your legal name for our records. Oh, and don't mind the dead bodies in the halls, the Bugs leave those from time to time. If you're that worried about being attacked, all our employees are outfitted with a weapon to defend themselves with; we're certain you'll never need to, though! Now that we've gotten the paperwork out of the way, here's your cubicle, and the C.E.O. should page you soon with your first assignment!
Mouth Sweet is an RPG Maker horror game with first person shooter elements, made by Mitchell Hall of L.O.V.E. Games and released in 2016. You've been assigned an entry level job working for the rather large C.C.C. Inc. by your temp agency, hoping that it'll lead to a job substantial enough that you can make ends meet. Tasks are paged to you on a PDA that doesn't send messages, it only receives them, and each job is both seemingly inscrutable in terms of what the end goal is, while also getting progressively more disturbing. Not helping things are the invisible beasts roaming the halls, dismissively referred to as Bugs by the management, which will tear you apart if you stay in the halls longer than 20 seconds. Each task requires you to go through several, featureless hallways before reaching your destination, dealing with the Bugs as you do so; either by shooting them with your revolver, which only has six shots, or by ducking into another room, which stops them from chasing you, if you can tell which doors are and aren't locked. Ultimately, if you can tolerate your demeaning boss, not ask questions, and above all, keep your ears open, you might uncover exactly what the deal is here... or at least, make enough money to quit with your life in order.
It can be downloaded here.
The PDA lights up and shows you your next assignment. "List examples of tropes that appear in Mouth Sweet."
- Bad Boss: The C.E.O. acts civil during your first meeting with him, but fail to accomplish your (impossible) responsibilities, and he will waste no time tearing into you.
- Casual Car Giveaway: Honoreé is perfectly willing to lend you her car so you can escape C.C.C. Inc., provided you return it to her once you get home - There's still a lot of people who are going through what you did, and she needs her car to help them.
- Could Say It, But...: Honoreé drops a number of obvious hints that she wants you to borrow her car and ditch the company. She would say it bluntly, but her programming won't let her openly rebel.
- Creator Cameo: All of the vocalizations in the soundtrack are done by Mitchell.
- Crocodile Tears: When you make your escape, in the hallway right before the final stretch of Bugs, one of the last remaining employees mentions that the Bugs have learned to mimic human crying. Their impression is so dead on that he cannot bring himself to escape.
- Defector from Decadence: Honoreé doesn't approve of what C.C.C. Inc. is doing, and tries to subvert their wishes at every opportunity. However, she is programmed in such a way that if she does so too openly, she will power down.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Almost all of the game is greyscale, tinted slightly green to resemble an old GameBoy game. The only time you see colors that fall outside this range is when you select your appearance, only to have your choices overridden to also be monochrome. The night sky you see on your drive home after escaping is a deep purple, with bright yellow stars.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: At the game's start the player is presented with a selection of colorful characters to choose as your avatar, only to be be told that it doesn't "fit the culture" of the company and forcibly reassigned a generic monochrome character (one of two generic NPC designs), regardless of whatever choice you made. What's more, whatever name you input, it will be rejected in favor of either "Haas" or "Alice," the name that's apparently on your documents. When you protest, your employer assures you it's just for "the records"... and then proceeds to address you by that name. Besides being an extension of the game's themes of the dehumanizing nature of corporate culture, this particular aspect feels extremely in line with challenges many people under the LGBTQ umbrella face when seeking employment, in particular, transgender people.
- Driven to Suicide: Vivienne knew the sandwich would kill her. She tore into it like she hadn't eaten in days.
- Gone Horribly Right: A minor one, on the antagonistic side. Honoree states that she's an Empathy Unit- an android, designed to increase employee retention by presumably being a False Friend to the employees in question. Her empathy is so strong that she actively tries to help them escape the inhumane treatment they deal with.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: The C.E.O. is never shown. Every time you enter his office, you see his empty desk, with no one sitting at it.
- Homage: Mitchell's Patreon describes Mouth Sweet as "A Game Boy version of Killer7."
- Invisible Monsters: The Bugs. To fight them, you must listen for them. Though if you land a killing shot, you get a split-second view of their silhouettes.
- Loophole Abuse: Honoreé gets around her Restraining Bolt (which prevents her from openly rebelling against C.C.C. Inc.) by suggesting to the player to NOT steal her car for a getaway vehicle if they so happened to find her missing key somewhere in the building.
- Meaningful Name:
- 'Haas' is Dutch for 'Hare', matching the rabbit ears forced upon the player as part of their uniform. The saying 'Mijn naam is Haas'/'My name is Hare' is a way of saying 'I don't know anything' or 'That's none of my business', matching how C.C.C.'s employees are encouraged to keep their heads down.
- Alice, meanwhile, serves as an Alice Allusion.
- Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: Played for Drama. Not even you know what your job is supposed to be- all of the tasks you're assigned seem to have no skills shared between them, and say nothing about what goal they're supposed to accomplish.
- One-Woman Wail: The C.E.O.'s theme has a rare male example of this, containing a scream of tired despair done by Mitchell himself.
- Rambling Old Man Monologue: The C.E.O. gives you one at the start. It bores you so much that most of it is replaced with static noises.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: Honoreé is one. She comments that androids like her are common nowadays, and that there's no paid job that a machine can't do instead.
- Scannable Man: One of the tasks has you apply a barcode sticker to an infant in the past. It's implied the infant is your past self, and that the sticker branded the barcode onto your ankle.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Mouth Sweet is pretty much "Soul-Crushing Desk Job: The Game." Your employer berates you for the most minor of reasons, your co-workers want nothing to do with you or each other, and you could be mauled to death in the hallways by invisible beasts, only for your corpse to be treated as an inconvenience.
- Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: The Bugs are invisible, so in order to fight them, you must listen for their footsteps, and fire in the direction they sound the strongest in.
- Sudden Principled Stand: If the player reaches the 'cut the cake' assignment, they flat out refuse to follow through with it upon realizing just what's expected of them.
- Threat Backfire: During the final stretch, your P.D.A. informs you that you're fired, and will never have a chance to work with a company like C.C.C. again. You can respond in a way that makes clear that you hope they're right.
- Title Drop: When you're aiming your gun, you can usually see "Mouth Sweet" graffitied somewhere on the walls.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The C.E.O. doesn't flinch when you tell him you found a corpse in the hall, remarking only to tell the janitor so it gets cleaned up. None of the co-workers who witness Vivienne's head explode seem all that distraught either, merely making offhand remarks about the situation.
- Video Game Time: As it turns out, the entire game takes place over the course of three years. Honoreé comments on the protagonist's shock to hear just how much time they spent working for C.C.C. before getting out.
- Womb Level: The final set of hallways take on a fleshy appearance, seemingly on the C.E.O.'s orders, in a final attempt to force you into compliance.
