STORY
The ER: Patient Typhon has you play as an unknown female protagonist, who wakes up in what looks to be a prison but is actually an emergency room in a hospital called Saint Icaros and, oh yeah, and she’s had her arms removed. Right from the start you can tell everything is off, the staff are rude and strange, the way you ended up in the E.R seems suspicious, and every other patient is also missing limbs.
Three red flags telling you to get the hell out of this joint. As you escape, you’ll find the true intentions of the doctor and run into some unique and oddly gruesome enemies. With no arms, you’ll need to use your wits, hide, and run to survive.
MECHANICS

The controls are simple and the game can be played either with a keyboard or controller (no need for a mouse). WASD is your movement, the spacebar is your run, and that’s all; every interaction you’ll have is initiated just by running into the item and the animations kick off. The only issue I had with the controls was with sprinting. It’s short, there’s no way to cancel, and in some chase sequences it takes a hot second to start running again. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why sprinting is designed this way since your character is somewhat drugged up and has no real sense of control or balance because she now has the body shape of a dart, but still.
The controls while running is something that gets in the way of overall gameplay. On a handful of times, I need to run from a creature, past some objects, and I would find myself caught on said objects and end up dead. That’s really the only gripe I have with the controls.
The puzzles in the game are simple, with a few that need a little digging to figure out the answer. Most of the story’s background is found on notes scattered about, and the enemies and chase sequences are great and add a lot of
tension to the game. Really, the only other issue I found is that it seems that you’ll have to go through some trial and error with new monsters or scenes.
Dying may be prevalent on your first playthrough, and I am rarely a fan of trial and error, only finding it acceptable in a few styles of games, but I’m happy to say that I can look past this because they had the foresight to adjust the game to where if you’ve beaten a puzzle or scripted event, when you die and respawn at the checkpoint you no longer have to go through them again. As the game saves you the time and effort from repeating puzzles you’ve already solved, and with each bizarre enemy having a unique way to kill you and providing a specific achievement for dying, it may be worth running back through the halls more than once.
GRAPHICS & SOUND DESIGN
Now, for my favorite part. Graphically, it’s unique with its hand-drawn elements and the backdrops being simplistic yet conveying its message clearly. The monster designs, gruesome and strange when you first encounter one, can leave you taken back and shocked for a second. I had a chill run down my spine a time or two when they started chasing me and one of the biggest reasons for that is the sound design. With strange sounds from monsters, medical equipment, and many other things, all using directional sound, it gives you a 3D feel inside a 2.5D game.
The only downside with the sound is that creature sounds tend to repeat, with short sound recordings and no deviation from the same. The music that follows in some sections (if you can call it that) bring a lot of the tension, from what sounds like scraping chords on a guitar to random plucking of strings, and rising scales to build your fear and keep you in a state of unease, all coming together to give you an edge-of-your-seat experience with minimal effort in many sections.
OVERALL

Overall, it’s the mystery of the ER and the tension that what will keep you playing. The ER: Patient Typhon is about 3 hours long, at least for me and this was the bad ending, and there’s also a strange safe on the main screen that you will have to find out what’s inside.
It’s a wonderful experience for anyone who loves tension, a unique story, and world-building. I give this a 7 out of 10 which is a good score in my book. Yes, it has a few hiccups, but the story is something that drove me to finish the whole game in one sitting and I would have started again if it was not late in the night. So again, if this is something that looks even remotely interesting to you, I would say, without a doubt, pick this up.
Credits
Author | Curtis Pyke |
YouTuber | Indie Direct |
Program | Freedom! Scholarship |
Publisher | MGN |
Game | Outriders |