If you want to play this as a skin-deep point and click adventure about surviving the plague, have at it. Which brings me to my personal favourite part of The Plague Doctor of Wippra. Make some savvy choices and you’ll be able to discover what’s causing the plague and maybe stop it from spreading further. It is however possible, if you make right choices, to change history. As you might expect in a game centred around the black death, there are few positive endings, at least that I’ve uncovered. It’s never immediate, but you’ll always feel the repercussions of your actions later. Try to do the right thing for people and this can come back to bite you. Your actions during these moments lead to a few different endings in the game. Right at the start of the game, you’re given a moral quandy with a decision to make do you condemn a family by reporting them to the city guard as you’re instructed to, or do you keep it hush hush for now and try to help them? This, along with a few other junctions in the game (some choices, some puzzles with multiple solutions), bring a strong sense of moral right to proceedings. The strength of personality in this game is most aptly demonstrated in the principles and story of The Plague Doctor of Wippra. It can get dry and humourless at times but rather than just acting as a proxy for the player’s decisions, Oswald has character and righteousness of his own. Sometimes you, the player, will have an idea of how to overcome an obstacle, but Oswald Keller will refuse to do something, in case it’s detrimental to others. This game also brings with it a strong sense of personality. You won’t have to roam far and this game is rarely complicated but it will have you investigating every point of interest. You’ll meet patients that need particular treatments, like balms you’ll have to craft yourself from raw ingredients you’ll have to find dotted around. That’s underpinned by a well crafted lattice of objectives that make great use of the compact nature of The Plague Doctor of Wippra. Instead, the game does an admirable job of funnelling you to the things you need, when you need them and not before. You can’t just go kleptomaniac and pick up anything that isn’t nailed down. More so than a lot of modern point and click adventures however, The Plague Doctor of Wippra prevents you from just picking up anything and everything before you really need it. The Plague Doctor of Wippra is in no way mechanically innovative, instead following the familiar genre staples. You can examine and pick up items from the environment and then combine or use them from your inventory in order to do so. You’ll be presented with a problem – it’s too dark to examine the patient, for example – and it’s up to you to find the solution. This game is a traditional, inventory driven point and click adventure. Working with the Sisters at the local church, you’re tasked with treating the unwell villagers as best you can. You’ve recently arrived in the area after the previous physician here succumbed to the sickness. Like much of Europe during the Middle Ages at some point, the town of Wippra is struggling with ‘The Black Death’. In The Plague Doctor of Wippra, you play as doctor Oswald Keller. It’s smart commentary that embodies the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Developer Alexander Leps has cleverly linked many of the feelings, divisiveness and events of 2020 to present day in the world of Wippra, only with accurate and timely references. Just below the pixel art surface is a plethora of whip smart observations about how the world reacted to the COVID Pandemic that we’re (hopefully) moving away from.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |