Body Bargain

The player is a young woman who has agreed to apprentice herself toa Dr Overclock, a cybernetic surgeon of dubious moral fibre, in exchange for the body of her dreams. There are three surgeries left to perform that night, and the protagonist is to aid her new mentor in each one. These surgeries mount in intensity and ghastliness, with Dr Overclock exhibiting increasingly monstrous traits as we proceed from one surgery to the next. It is a little like the Milgram Experiment. Personally, as soon as I understood what was about to happen in the third surgery, as soon as Overclock put that bonesaw in my hands, it was goodbye Overclock and "no jury on earth would convict me".

I am highly impressed by the game structure here. Setting, NPCs and plot are provided, but the player is free to work his own way through the story in whatever way he chooses. I don't know if anyone has attempted anything quite like this since "I-0", or perhaps "City of Secrets". I applaud the author simply for attempting it. And, for the most part, she pulls it off. Kudos.

The actual implementation is a little rougher. There are details which require a bit of a leap to figure out. I became aware of a catalogue of drugs in the dispensary only because the game asked to disambiguate between that and the shelf of drugs; similarly, I was unaware until making the first incision that the third patient was awake and unsedated -- this last being a detail that should have been all too apparent from the beginning.

So, it's a neat little game that could stand a few more crossed t's and dotted i's. A little horrifying, but also fascinating. I call it two eggs, done any way you like; bacon, hash browns, and brown toast with a wide variety of jams. Black coffee.