Medical Game

"Scalpel. Tweezers. Sponge. Wiimote."

There is a nasty cold and flu invasion going around and we need your help getting HALLS drops to all the poor sick customers.

— Cold and Flu Invasion

In some games, medical treatment isn't a big deal. You might be able to Heal Thyself or just eat or drink something, take a nap, or even simply stop fighting to get better. Sometimes, the moment you get sick or injured, it's Game Over. Other times, medical treatment takes a bit of effort, but it's not the main focus of the game. And sometimes, you can't even get sick or injured. Well, This Is Not That Trope. These are games where the whole point is to give medical treatment to one or more injured or sick characters.

They often involve role-playing as a doctor, nurse, or veterinarian and quite often you can take your time (occasionally overlapping with the trope Take Your Time if the illness or injury would require critical attention in real life), but sometimes they can be a Timed Mission where you have to treat the character(s)' problem/s quickly before they die. In games where many different characters are coming in, there might be a risk of either one of them dying while you're busy tending to the others, or running out of room (e.g. you have six beds, but then in comes a seventh patient). Characters' deaths may result in Game Over, or, if there are multiple characters, may simply detract from your score.

Usually, the aim of the game is just "treat this character's illness/injury" or "treat both/all of these characters' illnesses/injuries", but other times it's "give medical treatment to as many characters as you can before the time runs out", "treat their illness without getting sick yourself", or "give medical treatment to X number of characters before the time runs out". More realistic games of the genre tend to be Simulation Games as well, usually those revolving around surgery.

May overlap with Sick Episode, Find the Cure!, The Dentist Episode, Magic Antidote, The Plague, or Injured Limb Episode. Contrast Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000 for games about hurting people. Compare Disaster Relief Game and Contamination Situation, where treating the patient might not be the only goal of the game. Do not confuse this with Playing Doctor.

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Examples

Games Entirely Devoted to Medical Treatment

• Amateur Surgeon, a flash game parody of Trauma Center wherein your job is to perform increasingly harder surgeries on increasingly more gruesome patients. It had quite a few sequels, including a Christmas themed one.
• Baby Hazel:
  • One game is about Hazel's eye being injured in a dust storm. You have to take her to the eye doctor and nurse her eye back to health.
  • One game is about treating Hazel's cat Katie (who has a cavity) and her parrot Charlie (who has a throat infection).
  • "Baby Hazel Goes Sick" is about Hazel catching a cold and you treating her.
• Barbie Flu Doctor is about treating a flu-ridden Barbie.
• Cold and Flu Invasion is about administering pills to patients that have either colds or the flu.
• In Creatures the player will have to heal some Norns suffering from infectuous diseases or who have been poisoned.
• The Cute Hospital series is about working as a vet. "Cute Pet Hospital" is about treating regular pets, "Cute Farm Hospital" is about treating farm animals, and "Cute Horse Hospital" is about treating horses.
• The web game series Dark Cut has you take the role of surgeon where you treat horrifying injuries. The first takes place during medieval times, the second during a war, and the last through a variety of different scenarios.
• Doc McStuffins:
  • Doc McStuffins' Clinic (unofficial) is about treating "injured" toys.
  • Doc and Hallie's Checkup Challenge (licensed) is about trying to fix all the toys before the time runs out.
• Doctor Wars is a card game (but not with the standard deck) about doctors competing to treat patients.
• Edheads is a website that features edutainment surgery games, including knee surgery and brain surgery.
• Elmo Goes to the Doctor is a licensed game for Sesame Street about Elmo being treated for a cold, a toothache, or an earache. It has a Bittersweet Ending, ending with him still in recovery.
• Fever Frenzy is a game where you play as a nurse trying to cure people of a strange disease that makes them turn into animal/human hybrids.
• One of the Frenzy games is about running a hospital.
• Frozen unofficial games:
  • "Elsa Foot Doctor" is about treating Elsa, who has a bashed-up foot.
  • "Elsa Frozen Flu Doctor", the objective is to treat a flu-ridden Elsa.
  • "Olaf Frozen Doctor" is about treating Olaf, who is starting to melt.
  • "Anna Frozen Flu Doctor" is about treating Anna, who got the flu after getting hypothermia.
• A licensed game of Get Well Soon involves treating the characters. Each character has one ailment per level and there are two levels. Deep gets constipation and a skinned knee, Kiwa gets a skin rash, Riz gets lice and a verruca, and Jobi gets pinkeye and eczema.
• Hamster Hospital is an educational game about using maths to figure out which medicines to give to hamsters.
• The 1988 videogame Life and Death and its sequel were probably the first games ever to attempt anything close to a realistic surgical simulation. The first game dealt with abdominal diseases, such as an inflamed appendix. The second game went with brain surgery. Both games had you diagnosing patients in person, scheduling various radiology exams, studying up on the specific procedures involved, and finally taking a (literal) stab at it in the operating room. Both games were notoriously difficult, since you had to memorize an entire surgical procedure with dozens of steps (no photos or illustrations provided!) and then carry it out flawlessly under pressure in order to avoid killing your patient.
• LifeSigns: Surgical Unit and its prequel, Kenshuui Tendo Dokuta, were visual novels released on the Nintendo DS concerning the titular Tendo Dokuta working at Seimei Medical University.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic unofficial games:
  • "Applejack Pony Feet Doctor" is about treating Applejack, who injured her hoof after hitting a tree.
  • "Applejack Flu Treatment" is about treating Applejack, who has the flu.
  • "Pregnant Sparkle Foot Doctor" is about treating Twilight's back hooves, which are injured, and she's also pregnant.
  • "Pony Bone Surgery" is about treating Pinkie Pie after she breaks her leg.
• Operation is a board game about doing surgery on a man.
• Pandemic (the tabletop game) is about healing the entire world of four simultaneous deadly plagues.
• Paramedics Clear is a board game about being a newbie paramedic and trying to rush as many people to the hospital as possible.
• Whether Pathologic is this trope is debated by the fandom. On one hand, you play as a sort of doctor-shaman whose goal is to uncover the nature of the plague that's rotting the town; on the other, you explicitly can't save everyone, and most players find it hard enough just to keep themselves alive. The endings are similarly varied; you can stop the plague or let it run its course to prevent an arguably greater disaster, with plague victims you've healed or with nobody.
• The online game Peppa Pig Crazy Dentist is about doing dentistry on Peppa Pig.
• Project Hospital is a curious fusion of the typical medical game branches. In large part, it's about building and managing a hospital. However, players have the option to take over treatment of any patient in the building and can order tests, develop diagnoses, and prescribe treatments.
• Quarantine is about seeing who can build the biggest hospital, while at the same time taking care of patients and avoiding the spread of infection which can lead to wards being quarantined, hence the title.
• Surgeon Simulator 2013 is basically a game where you play as a surgeon but the physics of the game screw you over.
• Theme Hospital and its Spiritual Successor Two Point Hospital are Space Management Games set in a cartoony hospital where you treat patients with bizarre diseases.
• The Trauma Center games are about a young Tokyo doctor who starts out treating mundane injuries and illnesses, then, over the course of the game, treats several variants of a body-horiffic parasite-based biological weapon called "G.U.I.L.T." Each strain causes a different affliction: one will use Combat Tentacles to carve up a patients insides, while another will secrete carcinogens, causing tumors.
• In the game Unwell Mel, you have to cure Mel of a wide range of oddball (and usually Punny Name) diseases by playing Match-3 screens.
• Vet Set Go is a game where you work as a vet (either Mr. or Miss Vet) for various cute animals, from a dog to a penguin.
• Victoria at the Flu Doctor is a game where you need to treat a little girl named Victoria who has the flu. Albeit an odd version that comes from a too-cold ice cream.

Games With a Minigame Devoted to Medical Treatment

• There's an extra dungeon in Final Fantasy IV where Rosa has to heal as many people as possible before facing Luna Asura. Rewards are based on how many people she heals in a time period.
• The Furby app has a mini-game about diagnosing and treating your Furby. The diagnoses are usually punny versions of normal diseases, whereas the cures are nonstandard things such as honey for a stomach virus.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • In the game generally, all characters have the ability to revive dead/unconscious PCs, and doing so gives you XP and advances an achievement track.
  • Part of the Path of Fire storyline has a minigame where you have to treat as many injured refugees as possible, before protecting them from the Herald of Balthazar who will kill them. The "treat injured NPCs" aspect of this is a common task in the Renowned Heart quests.
• There's a very complicated licensed game of Horrible Histories that has a mini-game about putting leeches on a sick person's stomach.
• Moshi Monsters:
  • The mission "20,000 Leagues Under the Fur" is about going inside Elder Furi to cure him of a disease called Glumps (caused by him having Glumps in his body).
  • The second part of "Moptop Mischief" is about finding Zack and curing him of his poisoning.
• Neopets:
  • One plot had a sub-plot about treating Neopets who'd turned into wraith-like creatures, as well as Neopets (and Queen Fyora) who'd sustained injuries in battle.
  • One April Fool's joke had everybody's Neopets get a disease called the "Scourgies" and it could only be cured by other people, so users were buying the cures and sending them to other users.
• Valiant Hearts has minigames about treating people but isn't the main focus. While you play as the Belgian nurse Anna, your main objective for the most part is to treat as many wounded soldiers as possible - and believe it or not, when we say as many wounded soldiers, the term is neutral as you get to heal both French and German soldiers - while the Great War happens.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: Multiple side-quests require you to cure NPCs of The Plague spreading through Vvardenfell. While not a mini-game per se, the Game System gives you a multitude of ways to accomplish that goal, such as learning and casting a Cure Blight spell, casting it from a purchased scroll, or mixing/buying an alchemical potion with the same effect and giving it to the patient via dialogue. Additionally, some patients are found in difficult-to-reach locations or behind enemy lines, so the actual curing is the easier part of the job.

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