Wunderdoktor

I'm not sure how people are comparing this to Papers Please aside from the fact that you click on things to progress.

This is a carpal tunnel clicker nightmare where you play as a supernatural traveling doctor of the people in opposition to the Quack doctors selling snake oils. The entire thing is you seeing patients and helping them with their various maladies while a paper thin narrative unfolds in the background. Your exams are performed by using the mouse cursor as a medical implement to pop, cut, stitch, pose, squeeze, drill, pull, and squish all kinds of nasty things that are on and in your patients' bodies.

The art direction is pretty enjoyable. It is a kind of paper cut-out shallow depth diorama with characters that move like marionettes. You play in first-person and are aided by a little stone gargoyle fellow who mostly just back-seat diagnoses and holds a candle that represents the life force for each patient that burns down throughout each treatment. If the candle burns down before you heal them, they die on the spot and you have to restart their treatment. Otherwise there's no penalty unless you are going for one of the two no-damage achievements.

It starts off relatively slow and steady and the beginning stages are pretty breezy and entertaining. Although it's super gross, there is something satisfying about administering the treatments. I'm not a "popper" or anything like that, but I do have a high tolerance for gore and biological nastiness. And of course this is all cartoon depictions but be warned if you are squeamish or have trypophobia.

Over the 5 stages things quickly ramp up. If you make any mistakes during treatment by touching something you're not supposed to, the candle will take a hit and you will lose a lot of time. And of course more and more ailments present in each patient and some of the sequences require a nimbleness with the mouse and click that I just do not have at the latest parts of the final stage. This is where you are curing the Quacks themselves.

Some segments require you to mimic 4 sequential notes on a part of the patient (like their teeth) that are provided by your gargoyle assistant. But as you are given the second sequence the SFX overlap and it's INCREDIBLY difficult to hear the first note or two that is being played. I finished these by trial-and-error, which felt frustrating because I'm actually pretty good at those.

There are also some other mechanics that are tied into the achievements that don't feel completely cohesive to me: There is a small furnace located in your play area that is used to burn some of the debris and material that periodically falls off your patients during treatment. As you burn things a meter fills up and once the meter is full you pull a lever and receive a piece of paper that is used to reveal an image on an almanac you carry. You also get pieces of paper by spotting and correctly re-placing certain objects that your patients will come in with like a cigarette, a diamond ring, a party invite, etc.. but at first it's not completely obvious what you're supposed to do. So on my first playthrough I have not properly filled up a single page of this almanac because although I have "passed" each stage, I have not fulfilled all of the requirements to receive each piece of almanac paper. So, to me, this just seems like some additional mechanism to drive achievements.

Anyway, I quit. I'm not having fun anymore and I have restarted the final stage too many times and now only feel frustration. It is very repetitive and doesn't offer anything new in mechanics or story except an increase in frantic dexterity-based clicking to cure the patients.

It's an interesting premise and some of the gameplay is satisfying. I think this will hit the spot for some people but it did not for me which I am genuinely bummed about. I also don't think there is controller support but even if there was I have a hard time imagining how you would ever get to the end. I think the $10.99 price is a little steep for what you get so I am glad I got it on sale. Ultimately, though, I have too many other games in my backlog that I would like to get to.

2 out of 5 berry pimples for me.

Definitely one of the odder games I have played lately, in which you are a folk medicine doctor refusing to sell out your patients to the dubious elixers dominating the market. Short, interesting, and overall fun. There is even a bit of challenge if you are going for the achievements (no damage runs are not that easy).

Easy recommend.

It can be a frustrating game but I kept coming back to it and finally getting a patient to stay alive after several failures was rewarding.

Operation but spooky

Be a doctor for funny little injuries.

Playtime: 5.7 hrs
It was an interesting game, but I really got frustrated towards the end because I was aiming to do the no damage achievement. And guess what the achievement didn’t pop up after painstakingly restarting on the last level to do no damage. Must have messed up somewhere during the previous levels. But there was no way to find out which one. I think I will leave the game for now and come back when I managed to deal with my frustrations.

Not as amazing as Penko Park but it's a charming little game worth playing if you enjoy the dev's style.