Medical-themed games have a special place in my heart, especially when they squeeze in both accuracy and humour. Organ Attack! By The Awkward Yeti perfectly hits both of these points to earn its place firmly as one of my favourite games.
Just some friendly organ harvesting
The game can be played with 2 to 6 players, though in my experience the more players you have, the better, given that turns centre around targeting your opponents cards. All the organ cards are dealt out evenly between the players, then each player is dealt 5 action cards to form their hand, with each player’s turn consisting of playing an action card, then drawing back up.
The objective of the game is to be the last player standing, this is done by attacking and killing the other player’s organs, via inflicting various diseases on them with affliction cards. Most organs need around two disease attacks on them to be destroyed, with the exception of the Wild Organ, which needs four diseases. It is in these attacks that the medical accuracy of the game really shines through.
But I maked these…
The diseases in your hand can only be played against the organs that they would realistically affect. For example: Gallstones cannot be played against the brain, however they can be played to attack the gallbladder as this is the organ that would be affected by the disease. Likewise glaucoma targets the eyes, hyperthyroidism targets the thyroid, a cavity affects the teeth and so on. Each organ and disease card also carries flavour text to give a little information on what the subject actually does.
The main exception to this is the Wild Organ card, which can be targeted with any disease, it is important to note however, the information provided on the affliction card used for the attack. Many cards simply ‘attack’ a named organ, inflicting one damage, however some cards will state that they ‘remove’ an organ, meaning that two damage is caused by a singular card and the organ is removed more efficiently.
So many afflictions, so little time
As well as having the standard affliction cards that give a disease to a set organ, there are also a number of special attack cards in the deck.
- Wild cards can be played on any organ, and will count as one affliction to whichever organ they are played to.
- Instant cards can be played at any time, and players may wish to save these to play strategically throughout the game.
- Necrosis cards can be played on any organ, and will count as two afflictions, thus dealing two damage instead of the usual one.
- Metastasis cards are played immediately after another attack card has been played, and must target a different organ belonging to the same player that was affected by the original attack. As a medic, this one definitely shone for its accuracy.
- Poison cards, attack the user who draws them. These result in immediately losing an organ and discarding the poison card, then the affected player draws back up to five cards.
Another card that really amused me was the Common Cold card. This causes no damage to the organs, but gets passed to another player allowing a card from their hand to be stolen at random. As in real life, once it has been drawn the Common Cold cannot be discarded, but instead just passes from player to player until the end of the game.
But what about medicine…
There are also cards in the attack deck that help you to fight back against the onslaught of diseases that will be coming your way. Resistance cards allow you to resist/block an attack from another player, whilst vaccine cards briefly protect all the players organs from attack. Immunity Boost cards, meanwhile, can be played at any time to block any card.
There are also Cure cards that can be found in the deck. When played, these will heal 1-2 afflictions from the player's own organs - a card that can be incredibly valuable near the end of the game to delay being eliminated.
Bureaucracy cards, meanwhile, are yellow bordered and cause changes to how the game is played. The Chart Mix-Up, for example, causes everyone to discard their entire hand and redraw, whilst the Research card allows the player to draw from the discard pile.
Final thoughts
This is a game I came across whilst studying as a pharmacy student and thoroughly loved it for both its interactivity and its medical accuracy, and has remained a firm favourite ever since. The artwork is gorgeous, the rules are easy to follow and it doesn’t take up much table space when playing. It is also reasonably fast paced - I think the longest a game has taken at maximum players was about half an hour, making it an easy one to get on the table.
In terms of accessibility, the cards are in clear fonts, with explanations of how they work on each card, and rules that are straightforward. There are also reminders on each affliction card as to which organ they should affect, opening the game up to those who are not familiar with the medical terms being used.
I would highly recommend this as an interactive party game, and definitely feel that is is a perfect game to gift to any friends in medical roles. The accuracy here will mean anybody who works within the field gets an extra laugh, rather than being in the frustrated ‘but that’s not how any of that works…’ cycle.
