Game: Help Me Doctor
Genre: Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PC)
Developers|Publishers: IceTorch Interactive, Angry Angel Games| Ultimate Games
Price: US $7.99 |AU $12.00|CA $ 10.57|£7.19 |€ 7,99
Age Rating: EU 3+|Au G |US E
Release Date: 10th February 2020
Review code used, with many thanks to Ultimate Games.
In Help Me Doctor, you play as a Doctor who must help patients and earn enough money to keep your practice open.
Gameplay and writing
Gameplay consists of getting through appointments with patients one by one, looking over their symptoms, making a diagnosis, and then making sure that their paperwork looks to be accurate. Every time a patient leaves, assuming that their diagnosis and paperwork is correct, you will receive a small sum of money — if you get something wrong, you must pay a fine.
Aside from this, one of the few interesting concepts in the game involves you occasionally having to make moral decisions where you’re torn between increased money through immoral practice or possible punishments through doing the good thing. I found it much harder to progress when making moral choices, which is fair enough.
On paper, this sounds like it has promise. In terms of execution, it doesn’t work. Going through paperwork over and over again to see if the details are all correct and match properly is tedious, and brings to mind dull checking tasks at work. Perhaps this dullness is the point, to make things feel realistic, but if so it’s not something that I feel works in this context. There is no real enjoyment in it.
Making a diagnosis is a bit more interesting, but this is also fairly simplistic, and it doesn’t help that the symptoms often include silly jokes about breaking wind. Unfortunately, that isn’t the worst of the ‘humour’. Here is some of the information the game provides about what it calls ‘Celebrity disease’: ‘Occurrence: Mostly women without a life of their own.’
The writing as a whole is one of the biggest negative points about the game. Aside from the sexist and juvenile attempts at humour, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a game with so many spelling and grammar errors. Here is a portion of one of the messages that you receive while playing:
‘His illness does not require an urgent intervention, but the patient demands to go in despite of the line. He threatens You with consequences from the Ministry! . However, if you accept him, you can loose the patients who will go to another doctor.’
Other Details
As if all that wasn’t enough, I ended up running into a bug that basically stopped me from progressing any farther in the game. I was given the option of offering my boss a bribe to let the practice stay open, but the game didn’t actually allow me to give him the bribe. I made sure to check that I had the money, and I did, but there was no way for me to actually give it to him.
The music is one of the bright spots, to be fair. It’s catchy and is fairly pleasant to listen to while playing. The visuals are crude, but can be acceptable in a nostalgic sort of way. I like the touch of the clock on the wall that keeps ticking while you work, showing you how much time is left in the day until you have to close.
Conclusion
After reading through the above, you can see why I won’t recommend this game. The writing is poor, the gameplay is irritatingly dull, and the bug I ran into actually stops you from even completing it.
In all fairness, I like the concept of making moral choices and having to weigh that against your profit, and the music isn’t bad at all. The game as a whole, however, just doesn’t impress me in the majority of areas, even if you put aside the bug issue.
Final Verdict: I don’t like it.
Maybe you can do a review of Two Point Hospital. That is a better game.
Hi Nadia — thank you for your comment. Paula has actually just published a review for Two Point Hospital on this site! Hope you enjoy it.