Warning: The following review contains material of a mature and unsettling nature. Reader’s discretion is advised.

Set on the other side of the 90s, Autopsy Simulator finally lets Jack Hanman loose on a handful of unsolved deaths as Hanman processes grief, trauma, and tackles depression. With a name like Autopsy Simulator, I certainly wasn’t expecting Woodland Games and Team17’s first-person corpse stab ‘em up to be a light and joyful ride through the bowels of suicidal drug-addicted and murdered individuals. In fact, part of me was hoping for something a little more than what we got to some degree. Though, unlike many Steam reviews that I’ve caught a glance at, I knew what I was in for with Autopsy Simulator.

As we begin Hanman is almost a year into processing the death of his wife, the details of which are fed slowly to you – though putting it lightly, the writing doesn’t shy away from tropes. Instead, the writing leans into them and hits the floor like a Drowning Pool hit. Autopsy Simulator’s strengths aren’t its subtleties, which is a shame as it tries to share not only the ideas of forensic pathology but also some ideas of horror too. Hanman, tormented by the past year’s events and now on pills to abate his delusions/paranoia, has to solve cases as he walks students at the University of Missouri through their classes.

The operative word there is walk: More similarly linked to walking simulators, Autopsy Sim is less about solving cases and more about listening to exposition ahead of the next bump in the night. Only a few hours long, you’ll explore the coroner’s office alone as the power drops, as you need to do tests with shoddy equipment, and sometimes have delusions amidst episodes of paranoia. I think what a lot of people – myself included – have an issue with when it comes to Woodland Games’ first title is that you are effectively the student following instructions rather than it being a simulator of the job.

Walking you through every bit of the examination and mumbling about his dead wife, you’ll eventually get sick of Jack and hope there is a killer in the corner of the room or the corpse is going to get up and eat him. Preferably before I’ve cut open the stomach and trachea. Thankfully very short, there are only a handful of cases to take care of. The trouble is, as I’m making thinly veiled illusions to, you aren’t solving the cases unless you think Uncharted is a great puzzle mystery that could stump humanity’s greatest minds.

Unless you are binging Hugh Laurie, Emily Deschanel, and David McCallum shows, or are stoned and have a hobby of reading medical textbooks, it is unlikely you’ll understand subdermal abrasions around the clavicle and scapula. For those not deeply entrenched in broad entry-level medical terms, that’s scratches on the shoulder and shoulder blade. In fact, for that portion of Autopsy Simulator, it feels like someone trying to prove to their parents “Look, I didn’t waste my education, I can say laminectomy without stuttering.”

The actual procedures and doing the work isn’t bad, but with Jack consistently banging on it doesn’t feel very involved either. Focused more on story, the Petesville coroner and University of Missouri lecturer is center stage for 90% of the short runtime. I think it is fitting that the gameplay for the most part is somewhat like the battery-operated hand-eye coordination game, Operation. Cutting open the heart, stomach, and lungs to find the results of blunt trauma, internal bleeding, and lifestyle clues are mostly about moving the mouse between some lines. None of which is difficult.

I don’t think doing such a game as Autopsy Simulator is easy, unlike some comments I’ve seen inadvertently. Not only are the cases you are dealing with sometimes well-detailed, but I know there are parts of Autopsy Simulator that are difficult to pull off at the best of times. Put aside the fact Patrick Langner is given a script thicker than the additions to Doctor Who that Chris Chibnall made, setting up the crime scene details, artists and designers working on the corpse in correspondence, and making sure (to a broad and uneducated audience) that it makes sense is difficult.

Hanman’s actual story – that is a different beast as it loosely makes sense but isn’t very enjoyable or entertaining. I keep coming back to it, his constant need to talk which was sometimes cut off by me getting to the next point in the story just wasn’t fun to play. Whether it was walking too fast (lord give me a run button) or putting evidence on a board, he’d cut himself off sometimes to get to the next line. Apparently, I can process the cases faster than he can say it, and I’m not even a professional cutter-upper of bodies. Just a semi-regular truck driver.

Look, I don’t want to spoil or give too much detail on a game that takes a little over three hours to complete. However, what I will say is that for its trope-ladened, overdone script, Autopsy Simulator has some ideas that I think show a desire to do some sort of detailed medical-based simulation. Do all the pieces of the metaphorical puzzle fit together? No, the horror is clunky and lacks some actual suspense. There are maybe one or two unsettling moments but that’s less to do with horror and more to do with sudden shifts in tone.

Ultimately, Autopsy Simulator puts together an okay case file that tries a little too hard to jam a bland story into a game with passable to alright gameplay. Held back more by its character, the world and horror subplot, it could have been a lot better if it wasn’t messy and trying to deal with surface-level mental health issues. I feel I’m repeating myself over and over but Autopsy Simulator is sometimes messy, sometimes cluttered, sometimes doing something interesting, yet consistently trying to force a story that didn’t have to be this ham-fisted.

A PC review copy of Autopsy Simulator was provided by Team17 for the purposes of this review.

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Autopsy Simulator

$24.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• The medical aspect is solid.
• A promising baseline for the upcoming Autopsy-only mode.

Cons

• Hanman is tiring to be around.
• Horror that is cribbed from the blandest of horror media.