This week, we put on blouses to save patients from a New York emergency service, in Medical Mysteries. How is it played? What is our opinion? We tell you everything.
What is the investigation game Medical mystterys?
Emergencyists in a New York hospital, you will receive complex medical cases each night. Your mission: to unravel the mystery of the symptoms of each patient and, above all, to ensure that they survive until the early morning.
Medical Mysteries is a game by Rebecca Bleau and Nicholas Cravotta, edited by Iello and illustrated by Henno Drop.
🎲 How many players? 1 to 4.
🧑🧑🧒🧒 From what age ? From 14 years old.
⏳ Duration of the parties ? About 60 minutes.
How do you play at Medical Mysteries ?
Like any good investigation game, Medical Mysteriesfavors reflection on complex rules. No indigestible booklet here: during your first night, which acts as a tutorial, you are supported by Judy, an experienced nurse-urgentist, to make your very first diagnosis.
Your first patient, Luana Kapule, 53, arrives at the emergency room plagued by acute pain on the back.
The night is divided into four two -hour phases (in the game, not in real time). At each phase, you have three actions to investigate. The choice of actions is vast, but always linked to the patient’s pathology. For Luana, you can, for example, ask him, ask for blood or urinary analyzes, administer antibiotics or morphine, or use a specialist (gastroenterologist, nephrologist) according to the tracks you explore.
Each action can bring you closer to the good diagnosis or, on the contrary, worsen the situation. An error can be fraught with consequences: it is better, for example, check if your patient is allergic before administering penicillin.
To guide you, you have his medical file, his admission sheet, and especially small educational booklets. These aids explain the medical terms in clear language, the examinations to consider, or the indications of the treatments proposed.
Every two hours (after three actions therefore), a point is made on the state of the patient, which can improve, stabilize … or deteriorate. At 8 am, your guard ends, and an epilogue reveals the whole case to you. A small questionnaire then allows you to assess the quality of your care: Did you make the right diagnosis? Choose the right exams? Administered the right treatment?
But beware: if the first cases are relatively accessible, the difficulty climbs quickly. In addition to the tutorial, the box offers four other patients, with increasingly complex symptoms. For the latter, the real issue is no longer only to understand what they have, but to keep them alive until dawn.
Why play Medical Mysteries ?
Do medical series have no secrets for you? You know by heart the stories ofEMERGENCIES ,, Dr House Or Grey’s Anatomy? SO Medical Mysteriesis for you.
Although it is an investigation game, its theme and its way of approaching it have it a very different experience from what you usually know. Here, no murderer to be confused or thief to unmask: your mission is to discover what infection threatens the life of your patients. And save them in time.
The pace, too, contrasts with classic investigations. You only have twelve shares per case. It is therefore impossible to disperse or follow unnecessary tracks for hours. The game frames your possibilities, which makes it possible to solve each situation in about an hour, while retaining a good intensity. It is a very malignant approach, both tense and effective.
But beware, it is not because the rules are light that the game takes you by the hand. Each decision counts: the slightest question, the smallest clue or analysis result can guide or ruin your diagnosis. And poorly chosen treatment can worsen the patient’s condition.
Fortunately, the tutorial gradually guides you for your first night. An excellent idea, because the handling can divert at the start: several documents are to be viewed and their titles are not always very telling. But from the second case, everything becomes fluid, and you quickly feel comfortable in its role as an emergencyist.
The different cases are particularly well designed, and empathy works: we get attached to these fictitious patients, we rage to waste time on an unnecessary examination, we feel the pressure ride each new phase … We are clearly closer to games like Baker Street animalsOr Suspect than from a more classic investigation with total freedom.
If you are a fan of Dr House the series that is closest to the experience offered here, you will love Medical Mysteries. You could even start to anticipate diagnostics, exams to prescribe or treatments to apply before the game invites you (lived!).
Original, tense, and perfectly made, Medical Mysteriesoffers a really separate survey experience. We took a real pleasure in immersing each other in each case … and we hope that the second box will be quickly translated!
You will like Medical MysteriesIf you liked …
In short
We liked
- The medical series atmosphere
- Total immersion thanks to the vocabulary used
- Parts that do not drag
- A different survey game
We liked it less
- Avoid if you are allergic to investigation games or medical series
- The point system to attribute a score to the end is useless
- The galley to find negative points in the game 😁
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