Doctor Life review: a cutesy hospital with scarily real diseases

It’s been many years but finally, Doctor Life for iOS has come to fill the hole Theme Hospital left in my heart. Doctor Life is the debut game by Malaysia-based Wigu Games Studio, and it’s as charming as it’s challenging.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

The first thing I noticed about Doctor Life was its cutesy style. Great, I thought, a kids game. Boy was I wrong! Doctor Life may be cute, but it packs a punch and a learning curve that’s surprisingly steep for a mobile game. The gameplay is in two stages: during the day you treat patients, and at night you buy supplies and upgrade your hospital. Your goal is to win five medals and you prevent the “evil tycoon” (that’s how he introduces himself) from destroying your hospital.

It’s all about the medals

Being a doctor isn’t easy.

Who would have thought that being a doctor could be so hard? When a patient arrives you need to diagnose them based on the information you have. You have four options: three possible diagnoses and “refer to another doctor.” If you select the wrong diagnosis you fail and the patient leaves annoyed, if you refer to another doctor you only get small amount of money and no fame. Initially this is simple stuff like in the picture below:

This young lady has a sprained ankle, so we move onto the treatment which is also simple: give her an ice pack and send her on her way. Being a doctor is easy!

Then suddenly you are dealing with “bloody stools,” “pus in urine” and “diarrhea.” Shit just got real! Within a few hours you will need to remember the difference between the symptoms of bronchitis and pneumonia. Easier said than done! What’s worse, patients suffer from illnesses ranging from the common cold to urinary infections. It’s tough to remember it all, trust me.

The pressure is on

To make things worse the days are ridiculously short, meaning that you need to think fast. If you want to get the higher scores, you need to rack up a decent combo by treating patients in succession. One misdiagnosis or referral and you break the chain and limit your potential earnings.