S.O.R.S. Demo

Being a doctor is considered a noble profession, but that only holds true if the person in question truly cares about the patients. Having a diploma is not a very noble thing, but helping people and giving it your best to find out what’s wrong with them is. Thus, it’s always discouraging to hear stories about doctors who won’t treat their patients unless they receive a bribe first.

S.O.R.S. is an indie game that allows you to play doctor in a slightly different environment, and with interesting gameplay mechanics that feel a lot like a simplified version of Papers, Please. In essence, your job is to examine patients and choose from a list of diagnoses, each one of which has a list of possible causes and signs. Unfortunately, the experience is much duller than it sounds, not to mention repetitive.

To begin with, the whole thing takes place in the future, in a world where the human population has reached critical numbers and has to live in huge skyscrapers with little-to-no privacy. You play the role of a new doctor who must start working for a high tech medical institute where strange things have been happening. Thus, besides saving people, you must also make new friends at the institute and find out why so many people have been dying.

The actual gameplay is a bit too repetitive to be fun over long periods of time, since all you have to do is pay attention to patient history and perform scans to see whether the patient has diabetes. This scan is a very cumbersome process, on the other hand, because you have to use your mouse and hold it very steady in order to get accurate results. Since you are always working against time, this is not the ideal combination of elements.

You can also chat with patients to make them feel better, as well as discharge them directly if you feel like there’s nothing wrong with them. Each level features a time limit and a certain number of patients you have to consult, as well as a minimum accuracy level you have to maintain. It would be nicer to have more gameplay mechanics to toy with, on the other hand, because doing the same thing over and over again gets boring.

In the end, S.O.R.S. is a unique video game, but that’s not enough to keep you entertained, unfortunately. Thus, it’s too annoying and repetitive, even if you have multiple endings and an endless mode at your disposal.