REVIEW : The Plague Doctor of Wippra (PC)
There’s a danger that it won’t feel as special as it does today if you play The Plague Doctor of Wippra in a few years. Some creative works reflect the culture of their period and can only truly be appreciated after a major cultural event. This is probably one of those games. The time is now—exactly the ideal moment—to play this game.
You see, The Plague Doctor of Wippra appears to be a brief, formulaic point-and-click adventure set in the Middle Ages. You take on the role of a physician who has just arrived in the German town of Wippra.
Get Down With The Sickness
You take on the role of Dr Oswald Keller in The Plague Doctor of Wippra. The town of Wippra is experiencing “The Black Death,” which at some point during the Middle Ages affected much of Europe. You just moved here because the local doctor who was here before passed away from an illness. You’re responsible for providing the finest care possible for the sick villagers while collaborating with the Sisters at the nearby church.
This game is a typical point-and-click adventure with an emphasis on inventory. You’ll be given a difficulty to solve, such as the fact that the patient can’t be examined since it’s too dark, and the task will be to do so. To do this, you can look at and take items from the environment, combine them, or use them in your inventory. The Plague Doctor of Wippra adheres to established genre norms rather than introducing any new mechanical concepts.
However, The Plague Doctor of Wippra discourages you from merely picking up anything before you truly need it more than many contemporary point-and-click games do. You can’t just act like a kleptomaniac and take anything that isn’t secured with a nail. Instead, the game does a fantastic job of directing you to the things you need at the precise moment when you need them.
Click & Pox
This is supported by a carefully designed lattice of goals that make excellent use of The Plague Doctor of Wippra’s small size. You’ll encounter patients that require certain therapies, such as balms you’ll have to make by hand from unprocessed materials you’ll have to scavenge all over. This game is rarely difficult and you won’t have to travel far, but it will make you explore every attraction.
A strong sense of personality is another aspect of this game. The player will occasionally have a plan for getting around a challenge, but Oswald Keller will hold it back out of concern about how it may affect others. It can occasionally become dull and humourless, but Oswald has his morality and character, so he doesn’t merely stand in for the player’s choices.
The Plague Doctor of Wippra’s principles and narrative are the best illustration of the game’s emphasis on personality. You are presented with a moral choice at the very beginning of the game: do you condemn a family by reporting them to the city guard as you are told to, or do you keep it a secret for the time being and try to help them? This and a few other game intersections (some choices, some puzzles with alternative solutions) give the action a strong sense of moral right.
Several potential game endings are depending on how you behave in these situations. Try to treat people right, and it can come back to haunt you. You’ll always experience the effects of your acts later; they’re never immediate.
There aren’t many happy endings in the game, at least not that I’ve found, which is to be expected in a game about the black death. But if you make the correct decisions, you can alter the course of history. You can learn what’s causing the plague and even stop it from spreading if you make some wise decisions.
Making Wippra Great Again
This gets me to The Plague Doctor of Wippra’s best scene, in my opinion. Enjoy yourself if you want to play this as a superficial point-and-click adventure about surviving the epidemic. You could use that strategy. But if you’re prepared to read between the lines, this game is also a highly insightful reflection on how the world handled the COVID outbreak.
Racial and ethnic minorities are being attacked by mobs because they are held responsible for the disease afflicting their countries. Snake oil marketers exploit people’s anxiety by peddling inadequate anti-disease measures. a lack of trust in medical professionals and the therapies they advise.
the gathering of supplies. solitude under the duress of individuals who are sick. Even though this game is set in the Middle Ages, many of the fundamental events you’ll experience or have to avoid in it will seem all too familiar. The Plague Doctor of Wippra clearly shows the similarities between some real-life people and fictional ones, even though it is never stated explicitly. Without giving everything away, you could as well refer to Oswald as “Anthony Fauci, plague doctor” at times.
A Pixelated Pox Upon You
I must laud how logical The Plague Doctor of Wippra’s artwork also makes the game. Although there is an option to highlight interactive hotspots, it is completely unneeded. This game is simple to play thanks to the chunky pixel-style graphics and the way the sceneries are organised to draw your attention to key locations.
Even though they are employed infrequently, the sound effects of The Plague Doctor of Wippra are superb. Many scenes include incredibly well-done Foley. There is closeness to some of the background sound effects as well; for instance, as you travel across a temporary ward, various patients may produce louder groans. It immediately impressed me because this isn’t something you find frequently in independent point-and-click adventures.
Despite the excellent music in this game, which includes a lovely string and piano mix, I do wish there was more of it. There are several too-quiet sequences in the game, some of which are virtually silent. Certain portions of the game now feel almost creepy, but a more consistent backing track might have conveyed the mood of the game more consistently. The Plague Doctor of Wippra started as a pandemic lockdown game jam submission. The final output feels like a critical assessment of the human condition in these times of health crisis, even though it is a brief but skilled and involved point-and-click adventure in and of itself. The Plague Doctor of Wippra aptly illustrates how, despite the passage and progress of more than 600 years, we’re still a fragile race with the same old issues, whether it be the ethnic scapegoating of the Chinese/Jewish or people accepting untested popular theory over the opinion of trained professionals.
