Title: The Kindeman Remedy
Developer: Troglobytes Games
Publisher: 3D Realms
Initial Release Date: November 16th, 2023
Available On: PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series & One, Nintendo Switch
Reviewed On: Nintendo Switch
There is a sim/management game for just about anything, and The Kindeman Remedy brings the macabre of medical research into your hands. Originally released on PC November 2023, The Kindeman Remedy launched on modern consoles in the first quarter of 2024.
Note: This is a spoiler-free review.
SYNOPSIS
In this twisted story, you play as Dr. Kindeman, a brilliant anesthesiologist whose reputation was shattered by his questionable practices on human test subjects, all in the name of research. Because of this, you now work as a medical resident at Thompson Island prison alongside Sister Anna. While working under the guise of treating sick inmates (or preparing them for execution), your true goal is to continue your research away from prying eyes and restore your once spotless reputation in the medical community. Because, c’mon, they just don’t understand or appreciate your brilliance!
Throughout the mainline game, you alternative between Dr. Kindeman and Sister Anna as they treat inmates throughout the day. Dr. Kindeman prepares medicine in the form of pills and IV bags and sends them to Sister Anna to administer them. You must intentionally poison a few patients without attracting attention from the authorities, which Dr. Kindeman may then examine as his leisure during the night.
Dr. Kindeman also administers a special concoction to inmates on death row so that they survive the electric chair. Once the bodies are tossed, you then experiment on the very much still alive patients.
The more you experiment, the more you uncover about Dr. Kindeman and the ugly story behind it all.
ANALYSIS
Gameplay
The Kindeman Remedy functions are a standard management sim. There are tasks you must complete during a day cycle and night cycle. How much you get accomplished depends on your time management skills with two characters.
The game does a fantastic job of acclimating you to the plethora of activities to be involved in. You start with the simple task of crafting pills with empty capsules and the compounds within. Once complete, you ship them upstairs. Sister Anna must collect the batch and store them in the dispenser–with an occasional trip to the cart of poison.
At some point in the day cycle, you will be alerted to prep an inmate for execution (which will take place another day). You administer a serum during this check-up that actually will preserve their life after the electric chair…
As the game progresses you will also craft and administer IV drips, too. In one sense, it adds more diversity and complexity to your day, although when all is said and done, the motions you go through in the IV room are the same. Dr. Kindeman makes medicine, Sister Anna administers medicine.
At night, you get to explore the seedy, horrific sides of “medicine”. Dr. Kindeman dissects and examines the poisoned bodies, which generates minor research reports. The more inmates you poison in the day, the more bodies you can examine at night. The bodies also produce the same serum you can administer to inmates prior to their execution. During the night, you also make a phone call to a corrupt prison worker to “rig” the execution. Forget to do that, and you won’t have a live subject for your last nightly activity: torture.
After execution days, you have a live test subject to experiment on. You select the tool and body part. Do you want to hammer the hands or legs? Or perhaps you’d rather use a razor on them? The options at the beginning of the game are basic, but there are several unlockable options as your progress. Executing an experiment on a live person will result in a major report. You accumulate these reports with each loop as you inch closer to this Kindeman Remedy.
Once you get the hang of things, the loop can soon feel tedious. You made medicine, you administer medicine. At night, you carry corpses around, gather info, and make more poison and serums. You can become quite efficient with the process, especially when utilizing reputation points to upgrade and expand your arsenal, although by mid-game, I found myself bottlenecked and waiting around for my characters. I did appreciate the ability to assign Sister Anna and Dr. Kindeman up to three actions at a time.
There are little character and story vignettes are the days go by to shake things up a little; however, they didn’t seem to impact how I played during each cycle much.
Art and Sound Design
The art and music direction are basic at best, but for a management sim, I did not expect this to carry the quality of the game. I will say that the hand-drawn elements were neat and appreciated, but the in-game character designs were “fine”. For a game that is meant to be an exploration of the grotesque nature of medical experimentation, the lack of gory detail felt like a missed opportunity.
The sound design had me feeling like the mad doctor that I was, although over time I tuned it out because I was hyper-focused on the tasks at hand. This isn’t a bad thing, as it did not distract or pull me from the immersion.
FINAL SCORE:
The Kindeman Remedy puts you in a rare position to role-play as a twisted doctor who would stop it nothing to get what he wants. If you take a step back, we have seen this in history. As much as we want to turn a blind eye, many scientific and medical discoveries have come from cruel and inhumane experimentation. Role-playing as Dr. Kindeman should make you think about ethics in the medical community, or at least send a chill down your spine that some aspects of this game aren’t too far from reality.
From a core gameplay perspective, it was fine. Nothing stood out as spectacular and would draw me to return day in and day out; however, there was nothing I found fundamentally wrong with it, either. There was some level of monotony, and the limited exposure to the grotesque (both graphically and gameplay variety) capped it from its true potential. The Kindeman Remedy is still a solid management sim though, and I recommend it for someone who likes management games and are seeking to take a ride on the sinister side. Lastly, I would recommend playing this on mouse and keyboard. It was very difficult to precisely select items on screen with a controller and caused me unnecessary headache.
Note: A game key was kindly provided for this review.
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Featured Image Source: Troglobytes Games
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