Bad Doctor: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Tile Placement, Take-That
Player Age: 10+ Player Count: 2 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 Minutes
Game Designer: Dan Germain, Eric Magnan
Player Age: 10+
Game Designer: Dan Germain, Eric Magnan
Rundown:
Welcome to the worst hospital around. Throughout Bad Doctor you will score points in two ways; cure a patient’s last ailment or if a patient dies on an opponent’s turn and you have cured some of their past ailments then you gain points. The rules are simple, keep the patient alive. To cure them is just a bonus.
This is a tile placement game with simple rules of two actions per turn in any combination of drawing or placing cards.
Alteration:
The alteration comes from the patient tiles and treatment tiles. Patients have varying health concerns with more ailments surfacing as their health drops lower. The treatment tiles have varying amounts of ailments with better abilities coming from the cards with more ailments. Some of these abilities include gaining treatment tiles, play another treatment tile, add patients, move complication cubes and remove treatment tiles.
Production:
The tiles are made of cardboard to help retain the sturdiness of the game. This works well with the family atmosphere that the game is suited for. To add to this atmosphere there are constant comical jokes throughout the art that helps to make the silly theme come alive.
Interaction:
This is a highly interactive game as you are essentially playing hot potato with these patients. Everyone has to have their cards face-up so at any time you can see if they have the ability to cure the patient on their next turn. The issue is that if you don't attend to any of the four patients on a given turn then their health will drop. Once they have no available health spots for the complication cube to be placed then that patient dies, meaning everyone else who has a point marker (curing an ailment) on that patient will gain points equal to their tokens. This is not what you want as the game finishes once a player has scored eight of these markers (player with the most points after the game ends wins).
Determination:
Key Points:
- With its light theme it still has strategy due to the open card information.
- Fun theme
- Engaging hot potato mechanism
- Luck of the draw
Bad Doctor is a fun, family weight game that has players on two paths trying to cure patients on their turn or simply not having them die. Most often it is the latter. The game is basic in its rules; draw a tile or play a tile, however, in its execution the decision space opens up. Each tile has a special effect and most often it is to gain another tile, but some times it will allow movement of a complication cube to another patient, remove a tile or add another patient. Anything you do to a patient on your turn counts as interacting with them which prevents them from getting a complication cube on your turn. This is frantic fun with a good layer of strategy and take-that behind it that any family will get a hilarious kick out of.
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