Life & Death

1988 retro games Amiga games Apple games Atari ST games PC games

If you dream of becoming a surgeon or... you are psychopath in making, this is the game for you - sharp objects, helpless patients and only your meagre skills separate those alive from the dead.

In 1988 games were simple - platform arcades, shoot’em ups and surgeon simulators - there were no other genres available. And in that year The Software Toolworks published Life & Death, with a not very subtle subtitle: you are the surgeon!, which pretty much explains the content of the game.

To say that there was nothing like that before is an understatement - not only Life & Death was horribly realistic (for the era), but also pushed you to the limit of your capabilities trying to actually perform an abdomen surgery to save patient’s life. Of course you were given a thorough and comprehensive course (about 5 slides long presentation) preparing you to examine and treat the patients that are under your care. I mean, it’s not a brain surgery... which actually was main topic in sequel, Life & Death 2, but that’s a completely different story.

You start you medical adventure with examining first patient, palpating his or hers abdomen, prescribing antibiotics, referring to a specialist or ordering additional tests. But inevitably, once in a while, you will have to take the old scalpel and cut the sucker... I meant perform the necessary surgical procedure to remove the inflamed appendix. And here is were fun begins... To be precise, fun for you, not for the patient, because it literally means you will be doing every single step of the surgery, while the patient will be asleep, or in worst case indefinitely asleep.

You wash your hands, put on gloves, administrate all the preparations of the operating area, anaesthetise the patient (which, as you will quickly learn, is fairly important bit), choose the right instruments, learn how they work, etc. And then, with precision of single pixel, you cut the skin, retract layers of flesh, stop the bleeding, administrate the necessary injections, find the right spot, remove the appendix, close everything up and... Of course, I have no idea what happens next, because the surgery is complicated enough and you have enough chances to screw things up that I never had patient walking away from my surgery. Administrating antibiotics? No problem! Sending to a specialist? Will do! Need surgery? Ah, Mr. Smith, I’m afraid I have bad news...

Life & Death is exactly what is advertised in the title - there are only two ways each case can end, the game was really unforgiving and, in all fairness, they should just call it Life & Most Likely Death. I could say that it was Dark Souls level of unforgiving, but actually it was even tougher in some points, because here you actually try to save someone and most of the time you simply won’t. So again, if you dream of becoming surgeon, or you are psychopath in making, this is the game for you.

Our rating
★★★★★

Video
★★★☆☆

Audio
★★★☆☆

Playability
★★★★☆

User rating: 4 based on 2 votes

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

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comments

I remember playing it years ago - it didn’t end well for most of the patients :)
Dr De Ath (23-09-2021 13:44:27)

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Life & Death screenshots

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