Surviving History: The Fever!

June 29, 2014 11:42 AM

The year is 1793. In this story, you will take the role of a fictional physician, Dr. John Brooks, as he navigates a disaster of a kind not altogether uncommon in U.S. cities before the 20th century... How Dr. Brooks fares will depend entirely on your decisions. Every choice has a consequence. Choose wisely.

Also, an interview with the creator, Rachel Ponce.

posted by oinopaponton (19 comments total)

A strange game. The good Doctor keeps dying. The only winning move is not to play.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:58 AM on June 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

He looks pretty happy here.
posted by languagehat at 12:06 PM on June 29, 2014

Heh - I wrote my undergrad senior thesis on the event in question. The good Doctor Rush would strongly advise the mercury purge for everyone!
posted by killdevil at 12:19 PM on June 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I got tired of the doctor's attitude towards ragamuffins and black women. Guess I'll never know how the story ends.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:24 PM on June 29, 2014

The only winning move is not to play.

No, there must be a dwarf around somewhere. I'll go north.
posted by thelonius at 12:50 PM on June 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

There appears to be twenty possible endings.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:02 PM on June 29, 2014

The game just awarded me a badge for getting my affairs in order before dying. I caught the fever from my wife who caught it from my vomit-covered clothes that I brought home after seeing a patient. She survived in that path, but exploring alternative choices--not dramatically different choices, mind you--I find only a myriad ways either she or I could perish in varying degrees of squalor. The primary sensation is powerlessness and knowledge of one's own total ignorance regarding the right course of action.

This is not an uplifting game.
posted by daveliepmann at 1:45 PM on June 29, 2014

This is not an uplifting game.

Huh, one time through I ended up getting nursed back to health by the pretty shop clerk I'd checked on once - after my wife and kids had all died themselves - and then after I'd recovered we got married. ....I suddenly feel like I won in a weird way.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:49 PM on June 29, 2014

This is very interesting. Plus, since it's just a web page, it plays great even on the phone.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:18 PM on June 29, 2014

19 of the possible 20 endings:

A Druken Demise
Fled the City
Mugged and Murdered
A New Life Begins
The Sole Survivor
A Happy Ending
Behind Closed Doors
A Broken Father
An Unremarkable Death
A Watery Grave
Backalley Brutality
Attacked by Snakes
Carriages are Dangerous
A Grieving Widow
Sarah Survives
Looking for a Lawyer
Orphaned Children
A Madwoman's Grief
Complete Devastation
???????

The most common ending is "An Unremarkable Death". I particularly enjoyed A Drunken Demise. Sample:

This really is a fine ale!

I think maybe I'll just order one more. But damn if I'm not having a difficult time staying upright in this vexingly wobbly chair.

“Stay still, man! Can't you see I'm trying to sit here?” The chair seems to pay me no mind. What a rude, impertinent chair!

One of the sailors asks if I'm all right. I tell him about the chair.

“I've half a mind to complain to the owner about allowing such an insolent, sassy chair in this establishment,” I tell him.

“You do that,” he replies with a hearty laugh. “The stingy old codger is right down there, he says, pointing a wobbly finger at the end of the room. Tell him we don't need no rambunctious chairs intefering with our merrymaking!”

“Indeed I shall!”

I rise up out of the thoroughly disagreeable chair and make my way toward the owner, but now this mongrel chair has got a hold of my leg! I try to shake my leg loose, but to no effect. I am finally able to set myself free by pummeling the chair with my fist, but I can see it giving me the most discourteous looks as I make my way down to the end of the bar.

Anybody find number 20?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:21 PM on June 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I haven't gotten nearly as far as you, but I did get the ending you missed, and I just peered at the source files to figure out how to re-engineer it.

The one you missed is called "A Nursery Made Silent." You have to cure the dirty woman in Hell Town, then later you'll wonder whether you should spread the word of your cure. If you try to tout your cure, it puts you on a track that will guarantee the death of your kids if you survive (like where you miraculously survive after you go looking for a lawyer and help the guy put a dead body on the cart).
posted by savetheclocktower at 2:34 PM on June 29, 2014

This is interesting to play as a Philadelphian medical student and public health enthusiast. I've often wondered what it was like to be a physician back before the profession was of any practical use to anyone (ok fine Benjamin Rush was pretty damn prescient re: smallpox but his bleeding cures were total Galenic bullshit). My own university got its start in 1848 as a school of homeopathy-- a movement that could only have gained traction in an era when literally nothing was better than the best that allopathic pharmacy had to offer.

I mean, Walter Reed didn't identify the Aedes mosquito as the Yellow Fever vector until 1901, so it would be another century before Medicine had anything meaningful to say about the disease. In the 1790s, most of the discourse within the profession was a politicized argument about immigrants. There's a great paper from the '70s: Politics, Parties, and Pestilence by Pernick (paywalled; MeMail me). Hell, we still don't have a cure for Yellow fever-- the case fatality rate is ~3%

The game does a good job illustrating the frustration of a practitioner faced with the uselessness of the treatments available to him. We've come a long way, but it's a feeling not unfamiliar in modern Medicine where the nature of the epidemic has changed but the number of victims has only increased.
posted by The White Hat at 3:24 PM on June 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

This is very good - thanks for sharing it.
posted by michaelh at 3:48 PM on June 29, 2014

Got "A Happy Ending" on the second try. Maybe I should stop there?
posted by offalark at 9:26 PM on June 29, 2014

I ran out of the city asap and spared my family. I was chastised however for turning up the cities needs for trained doctors.
posted by gregjunior at 12:26 PM on June 30, 2014

By playing the scientific doctor who must always investigate and bring affordable healthcare to the downtrodden, I was killed by a desperate mother, insane with grief. Thanks Obama.
posted by hanoixan at 3:45 PM on June 30, 2014

Has anyone gotten all the badges? I've gotten all the endings, but the badge between "Autopsy" and "Snake Collector" and the one between "Dry Roaster" and "A True Scientist" elude me. Also, what a great game!
posted by epj at 6:27 PM on June 30, 2014

I don't know if there's a glitch, but I keep getting stuck on a certain path. At some point along many of the storylines, my character gets sick, and the options are to "rest a bit" or to have Sarah take me to Bush Hill.

But if I rest, then sleep, the game tells me I have Yellow Fever...but then doesn't have any other options. No ending, no way to continue.
posted by subversiveasset at 8:04 PM on June 30, 2014

epj,

I haven't gotten all the badges, but the two badges you're missing mean that you're too nice of a person.
posted by subversiveasset at 8:16 PM on June 30, 2014