Rxcovery is a turn-based RPG about Ezo, an unconscious patient in a hospital I wouldn't recommend, and Recovery, an android nurse who's handy in a fight. Ezo is on life support, but his insurance will only pay for another 30 minutes of treatment. Unless he collects $400,000 in 30 minutes, he's dead. Thankfully, the powers that be accept Dream Dollars, which Ezo can earn in his sleep.
Now I've never been on life support, so I can't attest to the validity of Rxcovery's dream economy. But I do know it's not easy to make $400,000 in 30 minutes—I've never successfully done it. And I imagine it would be much more difficult to scrounge up that kind of money while trapped in a labyrinthine abstraction of a hospital filled with demonic nurses, orderlies and bedbugs.
Rxcovery is an RPG first and foremost, but it's also a sharp-tongued caricature of modern healthcare. If only paying medical bills were as easy as hoovering up discarded gold and squashing a few monsters.
I say a few, but in truth Rxcovery has a staggering number of enemies and characters for a free game. Ezo and Recovery aside, there are 24 recruitable characters of four different races: human, witch, beastman, and droid. There's also a fair few abilities, including weapon proficiencies which upgrade as you use them and seven schools of magic. Rxcovery's interface is primitive to say the least, but its systems are surprisingly robust.
The most interesting is its take on new game plus. Each time you die—because again, making 400 grand ain't easy—you start over with all your skills, money and items intact. "It gets easier every time," Rxcovery's Itch page says. Having played a bit of it myself, I'm not so sure of that, but I can say it gets more interesting every time.
You can download Rxcovery for yourself on Itch. It's a name-your-own-price deal, so you can try developer L.O.V.E. Games' intriguing little game for free if you'd like.
Thanks, Kotaku.
