Hippocratic Oath is a surgery simulator set in an era where the field of medicine was going through its greatest revolution. The Victorian era.
In a world before anesthesia was discovered, a surgeon had to be fast and concise, yet careful. The operations theatre will be full of hard choices, falling under the responsibility of the players.
Aside from operating, the players will get to embody Orwald Stewart, a young doctor developing a promising and potentially revolutionary medical thesis.
Imparting classes, buying medical supplies and interacting with some of the town’s peculiar folks are some of the things the players will get to do on the doctor’s day to day life.
Hippocratic Oath is currently under development.
In Hippocratic Oath I took care of:
Game design:
I took care of the design and documentation of the operation system and its mechanics, mainly focusing on the behavior of the tools available in the game.
I also took care of designing and documenting various systems in the management and visual novel aspect of the game, such as the game calendar and passing of time, dialogue system and sanity system (similar to the game “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem“) among others.
Project management and production:
I acted as the game’s producer. I proposed a production plan to the team, negotiating with them different deadlines and weekly tasks. Every week, we had a reunion in which I spoke with every member of the team, and we evaluated the progress of the tasks. We would adjust the production plan according to the team’s necessities and capabilities.
Translation
I translated the game’s script from Spanish to English.
On the Sanity System:
The Sanity System was mostly based on the Gamecube classic: "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem".
The player characters in Eternal Darkness had a Sanity bar, which determined the possibility of experimenting hallucinations, as well as the intensity of these. These hallucinations were meant to scare and throw the player off, even sometimes breaking the fourth wall. The concept is very original and works as a nice horror game gimmick, but one criticism that could be issued is that the game fails to make the player doubt on the veracity of those hallucinations. The sanity system we designed for Hippocratic Oath set out to focus on that particular element.
The nature of the protagonist's profession as a surgeon and investigator in this time was filled with decisions that would take a toll on their mental health. Becoming the doctor is a big part of the game: not only doing operations, but managing time, resources and choosing how to proceed with the investigation. Every decision has a price, and usually, that price is sanity.
Unlike in Eternal Darkness, the sanity in Hippocratic Oath is not constantly displayed. It is shown once every in-game week and the changes of sanity are signaled, but not specified in quantity nor direction. The hallucinations can affect the player both in and out of the operations, usually elevating the difficulty of different situations, so it is best to avoid going insane. However, many hallucinations aren't clear as to whether or not they actually are real. Many situations in the game are designed to keep the players doubting. This all plays into the paranoia aspect of the game, and gives weight to the decisions, putting the players in risk/reward situations if they want to progress in the game's story.