Intro
Wunderdoktor is a point and click, puzzle game about treating and curing patients with rare and ghastly diseases. You play the role of a doctor who isn’t afraid of getting close an personal when healing patient’s grim problems. Through a number of small mini-games, the player must heal all the patient’s illnesses, infections, and defects against the clock. It’s a fun game with gross humor and if you're into pimple popping then this is the game for you.
You can buy Wundordoktor on Steam for £6.99
Story
However, engaging in this piratical approach to curing patients has caught the attention of Quack Co. a corporation that sells potions to ‘cure’ patients. These fat cats (or rather birds) want you to start giving patients these dodgy potions to give to your patients, elixirs, and nectars that fool patients into thinking they getting better but instead are becoming worse and even addicted to these potions. As well as curing patients you are also trying to undo the damage that these Quacks have done.
I think the setting that Wundordoktor has taken inspiration from suits the gameplay so perfectly. Ideas of medical practices, germs, and diseases were still so underdeveloped that people really had no idea what caused them or cured them. Weird practices like the four humours, blood-letting, and buboes bursting where common practices – luckily in Wundordoktor there is nothing quite that disgusting but it does capture these ideas perfectly with it’s wickedly, witty undertone.
gameplay
The gameplay in Wunderdoktor is like a cross between the Trauma Centre series and Paper’s Please. You ring a bell for the next patients and you must cure the patient of the multiple diseases they have before the timer runs out and they die. These actions are like mini-mini-games, for example, first you examining the patient to see what’s wrong, then you act accordingly. Clicking on pimples to pop them, slicing along a dotted with a scalpel, or looking up which pill to give them in you ledger – it’s speedy and frantic gameplay.
Unlike Trauma Centre you don't need to keep switching between tools, the game does that it automatically meaning that you can be as precise and fast as you can. However, there is one action that puts the break on. There is one mini-game that is based on listening to music, your assistant Stein will hum a short motif and you have to memorize and repeat this motif. Waiting to hear the song puts a stopper in the frantic action, its stop the feeling of being quick and precise. I think the game could have done without this, but in fairness, it does only pop up once in a while out of the many mini-games.
As the game goes on, procedures get more difficult and you’ll have to get quicker at doing the procedures. The game ups the quantity of illnesses that need to be cured on a single patient putting the pressure on. The feeling of successfully and efficiently solving all of a patients problems is so satisfying, especially when the last action is having to dispel a ghost from a patient by slapping them across the face. The game is quite short (2-3 hours) making it air-tight in terms of entertainment, the variety of mini-games holds your attention.
There is downtime in between patients where they can talk to you for a bit so it’s not all stressful. Like Papers, Please, patients can give you objects that you can keep on your bench and can give to others. A non-stop dancing aubergine person will give you an invite to their barn party and later you have the option of giving it to a patient who says they’re lonely. These mini ‘missions’ don’t affect the story but just add a little extra enjoyment to the game.
Graphics and Audio
The music of Wunderdoktor is pretty quiet and unassuming, it just kind of stays in the background. It picks up towards the end of the game but its just a different version of the main theme. The sound design is much more prominent, all the gross noises add that extra bit of gruesomeness to the game.
Conclusion
| PROS | CONS |
| + Variety of mini-games keep it interesting and fresh | – The music-oriented mini games interrupt the speed |
| + Speedy and satisfying | |
| + Gross humor |
