Help Me, Doctor! Review – I’ve Got a Feva’

Ever want to be a doctor? Well now’s your chance in Help Me, Doctor! But how will you, and the game, perform? Let’s find out!

IceTorch Interactive, one of the developers for this game, previously developed games like Exo Racing and Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska. So this is a bit of an odd entry in their library.

Angry Angel Games, the other developer, seems closely affiliated with IceTorch Interactive, having worked on the same games before. Truly an odd choice to go from racing games to a doctor simulator, but novelty is *almost* always a good thing. Anyway, let’s check out the game!

STORY

In Help Me, Doctor!, you play as a doctor who has opened their own clinic. That seems to be the basic gist of things.

There is some plot regarding the Minister’s son coming to your clinic without insurance. You have to choose whether to risk accepting it and being fined or risk the Minister’s ire. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much plot. 

I have a problem with games that introduce the prospect of a plot and then don’t deliver on it, especially simulation games which don’t always have plot to begin with (Depending on the game, of course). In my opinion, you either need to deliver a solid plot or not have one at all in these types of games. If you’re going to deliver a half-baked plot, what is the point?

I really would have liked to have seen where they would have gone with it. In the summary, it even says you’ll be monitored by the crooked Ministry of Health and asks what kind of doctor you’ll become.

Well, you’re not given much opportunity to find out, as you’re fined for mistakes or purposeful choices anyway. You can’t really take money under the table or anything in this game. You’re stuck on the straight and narrow by design (Not that I’d be any other way, but still, when you promise something, again, you need to deliver!).

In this game, there are no broken bones, but there are broken promises and I was left with a broken heart that this game didn’t live up to its potential in terms of plot and more.

GAMEPLAY

In the game, you have patients that come in with symptoms. These symptoms are all fairly ridiculous (e.g. uncontrollable dancing). I wish that the game took itself a little more seriously and had real symptoms with real diseases. That would have been a bit more interesting, in my opinion.

It also seems like they use the same three or four diseases over and over again. A problem I had is that the game didn’t explain the controls or gameplay, so the first few times I played, my character lost money for not including the insurance card or some other random problem.

The game also fined me for not noticing a “discrepancy”, but I wasn’t told what that meant. When I started back up again after two real life days of not playing, I inexplicably had gone out of business, which I also did not understand. Does the game take into account real time? I’m honestly not sure. It seems that way, as I went out of business after a real day of hiatus from the game.

At some point the day ends, and the game takes your fines and everything out of the profits. 

There are some grammar issues as well, such as, “you did not noticed,” and “…is a risk of wrath of the Minister”.

I wouldn’t mind the gameplay so much if the details and instructions had been explained better.

AUDIO

The music is okay, and there is limited voice acting (e.g. “next patient, please!”). It’s nothing to write home about. It’s just not memorable at all. I can think of numerous games with memorable audio (Golden Sun, for example), and this is not one of them.

I took a look at the credits, and they had about twenty people under “music.” I was absolutely astounded. That many people for the extremely basic audio that lends little to the game?

VISUALS

The visuals in Help Me, Doctor!, too, are okay – if not slightly ugly. I will say I wish the camera was zoomed in more on your character when you’re in the office before seeing a patient, as it’s hard to see details some times. The characters look really goofy, and the doctor somewhat reminds me of Jimmy Neutron’s dad.

In the credits, the developers thank “everyone else who put their work on public domain”. Oof. That’s kind of funny, because I had the impression they might have done that in the first place before even knowing they had done so. It just looks like clipart. I seems like a decent amount of the assets may have come from public domain without any real creative work being done here.

Public domain work is all fine, but it’s disappointing that the developers didn’t seem to do much themselves. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.

VALUE

At $7.99/€7.99/£7.19, Help Me, Doctor! is hardly the priciest game out there. But for what the game is, I wouldn’t pay that much, though. It’s just not a fun or engaging game.

If you’re really interested in the game, I’d wait for a deep discount. Especially since the assets mostly seem to come from public domain with little creative development behind the project.

Help Me, Doctor! Review provided by SwitchWatch.co.uk
Developer: IceTorch Interactive, Angry Angel Games
Release Date: February 10th, 2020
Price: $7.99, £7.19, €7,99
Game Size: 929MB