What do you want to be when you grow up? A question we were asked in school. Race driver, Astronaut, Doctor? You’d guarantee someone would want to tackle a profession in the medical sector. Then realisation hits you that, A) It’s a lot of money to become a Doctor, and B) you’ve got to be some sort of genius to be one. Much respect to people that can go through with it.
So for those of us that have less glamourous jobs, if you want to get close to the medical profession but in a fun way then you should play Dr Panic.
- Age 7+
- Time 12 Mins (Plus 10 to setup)
- Players 4-9
- Price £22 from 365games.co.uk
Let’s be clear here, much like when you think you’re awesome at Guitar Hero, that doesn’t mean you’re a rockstar that can put Slash to shame on guitar. Dr Panic does not mean you’ll make a good Doctor. For one when have you ever seen a real life Doctor save a patient by resuscitating a whoopee cushion? …Exactly.
Dr Panic is a game in which you work together to save patients within a time limit. It’s up to 9 players, but I’ve only managed to play it with 3 others. With 4 players you split into 2 teams. Your goal as a team is to complete the 8 tasks that are required to save the patient. The other team also need to complete the same 8 tasks which means you’ll need to co-ordinate which team does which task as to avoid you all clambering for one thing or having to wait for a team to finish the task before your team can start.
There are 8 tasks that are in piles of cards. You take one of each task per team, so as a team saving the patient you’ll be completing 16 tasks in total. These vary from making silly poses for x-rays, using a magnifying glass on yourself, stitching and organizing drugs.
As-well as trying to co-ordinate who does what to avoid clashes, there is an app that runs during the operation. The app provides the atmosphere as you’ll hear the “beep” noise heard when a patient is in surgery or on a monitoring machine (probably not official name, but I’m not a Doctor outside of Dr Panic). At random occurrences the app will produce a flat line noise indicating that the patient is going into “Cardiac Arrest”. Here’s where more fun entails as when the flat line noise kicks in everyone plays has to stop the task they were doing and yell “Cardiac Arrest”. On the app the flat line machine shows 5 numbers. One member of the team needs to constantly pumping the patient’s heart which is represented with a whoopee cushion, another member of the team needs to put these 5 numbers together on the table using a pile of numbers provided in the game. Once this is done the players have to bash the table twice and shout clear then press a button on the app. This might have resolved the issue meaning the teams can get back to completing tasks, or it might not have worked resulting in another set of 5 numbers showing and the procedure needing to be done again, including the heart pumping.
If that’s not enough sometimes the hospital chief will phone up while you’re all doing your tasks with a priority task which means you’ll all need to drop the tasks you were doing and complete the chiefs job. This can vary from all of you running to the front door of your house and signing for an imaginary package that’s arrived, to running around the table. It’s a very active game and with 2 rounds can bring the best of us into a sweat.
If one team happens to complete their 8 tasks before the other team they can then assist them in completing any outstanding tasks. Once all are done before the surgery limit time the patient successfully survives and you as a team win the game.
Unfortunately I’ve only been able to play this game 4 times since we’ve had it. I’ve absolutely loved it every time we’ve played it and am always trying to persuade us to play a round of it at our gaming meet ups.
It’s a game in which you’ll need a large table in order to setup all the task areas and you’ll also be running around and need to give each other space to perform the actions on certain tasks.
Also it’s over pretty quickly, often you’ll find setting the game up takes longer than actually completing a successful operation. But it’s so damn fun, that’s probably why it’s over quickly as you’re enjoying it so much and laughing constantly. The very legit looking hair nets add to the hilarity of the game too.
It can definitely be enjoyed by people of all ages and I can see it being a pretty big hit at small to medium size gatherings with adults and booze, it is hilarious to play when sober with 4 people, so more teams of wannabe Doctors and booze should result in absolute hysterics.
– Murr
