Best Steam Next Fest game I've seen thus far - Magical Girl ER

Location being: store.steampowered.com/app/…/Magical_Girl_ER/

I’ve been going through the Next Fest demos thus far, and I feel this one is actually good. So good in fact, I wanted to draw attention to it specifically.

The premise is this: You are a higher-up working at a healthcare firm. There are a bunch of monsters causing mayhem outside, and magical girls are being sent out to stop them. Naturally, the magical girls will get hurt in the line of duty, which brings them to your firm. Your boss is taking a vacation soon, so you need to handle patient admissions and their care while he’s away.

Unfortunately, these magical girls live in dire times. You get to choose which patients you admit, and your firm’s reputation goes down if a patient dies in your care. Your boss also makes sure to tell you that you should prioritize admitting the more famous magical girls, since turning them away would also hurt reputation.

And then there’s the treatment itself. You can check heart rate and temperature, which are free to use. However, other actions like asking the magical girl about her health or examining body parts consumes stamina, and you only have 3 stamina to work with per day. You get a booklet that tells you what the health condition could be depending on the symptoms you find, but the booklet rarely tells you one specific answer. Usually, you have to guess between several options.

And guessing has huge stakes. If you do nothing, the magical girl could recover on her own, or get worse. If you choose the wrong treatment, her condition will worsen greatly, but choosing right could get her discharged the next day. However, even if you choose correctly, the magical girl could develop other issues, which you will also have to treat.

To give an example: I was caring for one girl, Nail, who developed more issues after I cured her first affliction. The symptoms narrowed things down to fractures, which need a bandage, or internal injuries, which need a surgical kit. The last symptom I found was bruising, and the magical girl said she’s feeling okay, so I went with the bandage. I wasn’t exactly eager to cut her open instead. But it turns out that I really did need to use the surgical kit, because she died that night.

The soundtrack is great too. Love it.

It’s a lot of fun, honestly. And the full game comes out on the 27th, so that’s good too.